Free Ice Cold by Andrea Maria Schenkel

where was Kathie to go now? She wants to ask Anna, ‘How about your place?’ But as if Anna could read her thoughts, she answers Kathie without being asked.
    ‘You can’t sleep with me, I’m sleeping on the sofa at Mitzi’s anyway because I don’t have a place of my own, not since Lukas chucked me out, that’s my fiancé, the bastard. Mitzi’s all right,
her
fiancé, the one in Gelsenkirchen, he pays for the apartment. You could do with luck like that, right? One fellow to pay for your place and keep you, another to suit your fancy. That’d be just the thing! You canalways go to the hostel, the Marienherberge. Do you have two marks?’
    Kathie, walking along beside Anna in silence, nods. Yes, she has two marks.
    ‘Then you’ll have a place to sleep, and if you don’t like it there, well, you’re a nice clean girl, look for a fellow of your own. That blond guy, he seemed taken with you. Then you’d have a place to sleep until you find something better. Hey, don’t look like that, only joking!’
    They go to the Marienherberge in Goethestrasse together, and Kathie registers at the hostel. She is told to come back in the evening and she’ll be given a bed. But not too late, she’ll have to be there around seven or eight in the evening at the latest, if she wants a good place. She’ll get a hot breakfast next day too, but then she must leave the hostel. No one’s allowed there during the day.
    Suppose she finds somewhere else to sleep after all, Kathie asks the hostel manager, then what?
    ‘If you don’t turn up, then you forfeit your money. We don’t refund it. And don’t forget you’ll have to be here by ten, or all the beds will be gone.’
    Kathie takes the two marks out of her purse and puts them on the table. She has to sign in the register beside her name and then she can go. She walks around the city with Anna for a bit, until Anna leaves her, saying she has things to do. She doesn’t tell Kathie what they are, and Kathie doesn’t ask.
    So Kathie goes on strolling through Munich on her own. Seeing the city, looking in the shop windows, just wandering aimlessly around the streets. At some point that day she finds herself in Heysestrasse outside the Hofmann family’s shop. How she came to be in Heysestrasse she doesn’t know, she was just walking nowhere in particular. She hesitates for a while, wondering whether to go in or not. But it can’t hurt. So in she goes.
    Inside the shop everything still looks just the way she remembers it. Frau Hofmann is standing behind the counter as she always did, and Kathie goes straight up to her. ‘I’m Kathie, Frau Hertl’s daughter from Wolnzach,’ she introduces herself. For a moment Frau Hofmann looks blank, then she remembers Kathie. ‘Oh, my God, so it is! Kathie who likes the red cotton reels so much. Why, you’re a big girl now, Kathie.’
    Oh yes, the letter, the letter Kathie wrote, she did get it, but they don’t have a job here, she’s sorry. Times are so bad, you have to think whether you can hire any help at all. But she’s been asking around, and the lawyer whose lady wife is such a good customer of theirs, that family is looking for a maid, a kitchen maid, and it would be a good place for Kathie.
    Kathie lets Frau Hofmann write down the address on a piece of paper, and promises to go and introduce herself to the lawyer and his lady wife right away. But even as she puts the scrap of paper in her pocket she knows she won’t. Sheisn’t planning to be a kitchen maid. She could have gone into service back home in Wolnzach. But she doesn’t let Frau Hofmann know what she’s thinking. She smiles and thanks her for her help, and says of course she’ll go and see the lawyer.
    And how are things at home in Wolnzach? Frau Hofmann asks. Her mother was still going around the villages with her wares, says Kathie, and her father, oh, well, he was getting grumpier and grumpier. He wanted her, Kathie, out of the house. That’s why she’s come to