Free The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant

said.”
    “Mama …”
    “Pia, what did you say?”
    “Well, I didn’t say anything rude. Honestly, I didn’t. I just asked him about the stuff that’s been happening in the town. You know, about Katharina Linden.”
    “Oh, Pia.” Now her lips relaxed but her brows were knitted and her chin drawn back, as though she were seeing something shockingly sad. Then she sighed very heavily and reached out a hand to touch my shoulder. “Well, I suppose you couldn’t have known.” She shook her head. “Come into the kitchen for a minute.”
    Mystified, I followed her, wondering what I had done. Were Katharina Linden and Herr Schiller somehow related?
    “Sit,” said my mother, indicating the bench seat by the table. Obediently I sat, as she settled herself on the other side. So it was clearly going to be another little talk; two in one week was a record even for me.
    “Look, Pia, perhaps I should have told you this before, but I didn’t think it would be helpful. I’m not surprised Herr Schiller was upset when you asked him about Katharina Linden’s disappearance. Did you know that he had a daughter who disappeared?”
    “No.” I was genuinely shocked.
    “Well, he did, so obviously it’s not the best topic to discuss with him. That’s partly the reason I didn’t mention it before. I was afraid you might be curious and ask him about it.”
    I was indignant at this—how could she think I would do such a thing?—but to be honest, if I had known about it, I
would
have been consumed with curiosity. It might have been difficult to stay right off the topic, and a ten-year-old’s attempts to approach the subject in a subtle, roundabout way would have been picked up a mile off by someone as sharp as Herr Schiller. Still, the cat was out of the bag now; I might as well ask my mother all the questions that were seething to the surface of my mind.
    “Is Herr Schiller married?”
    “He’s a widower,” explained my mother.
    “When did his wife die?” I wanted to know.
    “Oh, I’m not sure …” A funny look passed across my mother’s face; I’m almost sure she was about to say,
You’ll have to ask Oma Kristel
, and stopped herself just in time. “I think it was during the war.”
    “How old was the little girl?”
    “Oh, Pia. I really don’t know that. I only know what Oma Kristel told me a long time ago. I think the little girl disappeared
after
her mother died, but I don’t know what age she was.”
    “Did they ever find her?”
    “No,” said my mother. She seemed lost in thought for a moment.
    “What happened to her?” I persisted.
    “Nobody knows,” my mother said. “She just … vanished. It was wartime, you know. All sorts of awful things happened. Your granny”—by this she meant her own mother in England, Granny Warner—“told me a house in her street was hit by a bomb and they never found a body at all. It must have been vaporized.” She glanced at me. “This is rather a gruesome topic, isn’t it? Shall we change the subject?”
    But I wasn’t finished yet. “Was she in a house that got bombed?”
    “No, she wasn’t. It wouldn’t be a disappearance if they knew what had happened, would it?” said my mother. She sounded a little impatient. “Why don’t you ask—no, listen, Pia, this was precisely the reason I didn’t tell you about it in the first place. You can’t start asking questions about it. You’ll hurt Herr Schiller terribly.” She shook her head again. “It sounds as though you have already offended him by asking about Katharina Linden.”
    “I didn’t mean to …”
    “I know you didn’t, but I think you have offended him. Perhaps I should call him and apologize …”
    In fact she
did
try to telephone him later that evening, but although she let the phone ring twenty times there was no reply. At length she decided to leave well enough alone; after all, what could she say to apologize that would not include mentioning the taboo topic? And I—I sat upstairs