Page 71 of The Bodyguard

Flick checks her phone, and takes a quick drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out. “Shit! Marianne’s calling a meeting. I need to get back.” She looks at me. “Am I going to see you again?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Possibly not.

She comes over to me, stands up on tip-toe and drops a quick kiss on my cheek. “Take care, Jonah.”

“Always.”

I watch her leave, sit back down, and pull out my phone, scrolling through my contacts until I find Gideon’s number. I need that passport now. I’ve got a plane to catch.

Sixteen

Lena

There’s just the slightest of breezes ruffling the flowers in the pretty wooden planter next to my chair. It’s a warm and sunny day, that breeze taking the edge off the heat, and I take another sip of my beer and sit back in my strangely comfortable wooden seat, looking out over the quaint street that’s home to this friendly, family run restaurant I discovered the first night I arrived here, in Germany. An island in northern Germany, to be exact.

I’ve just finished a wonderful lunch ofKassler Rippchen – smoked pork chops – and sauerkraut, followed by something I’ve become slightly addicted to over the past few weeks:Rote Grütze, a mixed red berry dessert. I’d never tasted it before, hadn’t even heard of it, but I must’ve had a bowl of it after every meal I’ve eaten at this restaurant. And so far I’ve been here at least a dozen times over the past month. The food’s delicious, the family who run it are incredibly friendly, welcoming me with open arms every time I visit, I’ve already got my own table both inside the restaurant and out here on the terrace. It’s like they could almost sense I was running from something, that I just needed a place to anchor myself: to think, get my head together. A place where I can talk about normal things like the weather, the history of this island in the North Sea, anything that has nothing to do with home.

I’ve been here for almost two hours now, and I should probably go soon: head off to the beach for a stroll along the promenade to walk off that lovely lunch. But I can’t bring myself to move, I’m comfortable here, and I haven’t finished my beer.

My phone chiming out an alert distracts me, and I stare down at it sitting screen-up on the white linen tablecloth next to my empty dessert bowl. It’s an incoming text. From Ollie.

I sigh quietly and lean forward to read it.

Are you OK?

He asks the same thing almost every day. And I always give him the same answer.

Yes.

They know I’m here, my family. They know I stuck a pin in a map and hit Germany, the night I ran. The night Bodie – Jonah… I still can’t get used to that. To thinking about him as anything other than Bodie. But the night he left, the night I refused to go with him, and ran here instead, I knew I’d have to let my family know. I couldn’t leave them wondering where I was because, in the end, they’d have found me anyway. But I told them I wasn’t coming home, not yet. I told them I needed time, after finding out the truth about Stefan Novak. Mum’s affair. They couldn’t hide it from me, not anymore. I’d needed answers, and they’d finally given me some. So, yeah, I needed time to get my head around everything. Time to process the shocking revelations. And they’ve given me that time, and I’m grateful. Although I have no idea how this is, ultimately, going to pan out. I’m just taking each day as it comes.

They’d asked me if Jonah – because I really need to think of him as Jonah Risberg now, that’s who he is. Bodie Bekker never existed. They’d asked if he was with me. I told them he wasn’t. Because he isn’t, with me. And I think they believed me, but I know my dad isn’t happy. I know he’s angry about being deceived, if anything it’s his pride that’s dented more than anything. He can usually detect when something isn’t right, when a person can’t be trusted, but Jonah – he fooled everyone. All of us. And I still don’t know how I feel about what he did.

He was doing his job…

I still think about him. I still wonder if he was telling the truth when he told me the feelings he had for me were real. He’d seemed serious. Deadly serious. His gaze hadn’t wavered, he’d looked like he meant it, but then, he’d managed to convince me he was someone else, for months.

He lied to you.

So did my entire family.

My father wanted to send protection out here, to watch over me, because nobody knows what Stefan Novak’s next move is going to be. But what we do know is that he wanted to punish my family for keeping a secret so huge from him for too many years. But that punishment hasn’t happened yet. Nor has he tried to reach out to me, because there were fears that he might. That he might try to contact me: take me, use me as some kind of pawn as a way to get back at my family, nobody knows for sure, but so far he appears to be lying low, which is why my father wanted to send protection. But I’m too jaded by what happened with Bodie – Jonah – to go down that route again. I can look after myself.

I’ve rented a cute little house in a beautiful little street close to the beach, and I’m rarely alone. I make sure people are always around me, I’m not stupid. But I’m not going home. I’m not going back to the UK, not yet. I’m still angry and hurt and confused. And right now, I don’t want to be around people I can’t trust, even if they claim they only kept things from me for my own good. Maybe they did, it doesn’t matter. It’s not something I can process in a matter of days.

Draining the last of my drink, I finally push myself up out of my seat and wave at the owner as he comes out of the restaurant carrying a tray of beer. He smiles and bids me good afternoon and I leave in an unusually buoyant mood. Good food, nice weather, friendly people who don’t know anything about me, that’s all I need right now. And I didn’t really end up here, on an island in the North Sea, because I stuck a pin in a map. I chose to come here. To Germany. I just didn’t let my family know that. I came here because I didn’t want to go too far away, I just wanted somewhere that felt unfamiliar. I wanted strange and new and different. I wanted a place where nobody knew me, which is why I avoided going to Greece, to the family villa. That would’ve been too easy, and too many people know me there. I wanted a place that gave me space to think, time to get my head together. Too many lies have been told, too much trust has been broken. And the one thing I really hate myself for isn’t that I can’t yet find it in me to forgive my family for the lies they told. The secrets they kept from me. No, the one thing I hate myself for is that I can’t stop thinking abouthim.Bodie… Jesus, I really have to stop doing this. Bodie Bekker never existed, how many times do I have to remind myself of that? He was never real. Jonah Risberg, that’s who he is. Who he always was. And I really wish I could stop him from invading my thoughts, but I can’t get him out of my head. And I’m trying to forget him, I’m trying not to think about him, because the man I thought I was falling for, he wasn’t real. He was never there. I was falling in love with a fantasy, that’s all.

I walk along the street, smiling at passers-by, some days I feel like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders. Today is one of those days. I walk past a row of quaint shops; a butchers, a hair salon, and a small, cosy café that specialises in kaffee und kuchen – coffee and cake – as I make my way towards the beachfront. I do this walk every day, I have done ever since I got here a little under a month ago. I have a routine, my days are very different now. I wake up around 7am, have breakfast out in the small back yard of my rented house, weather permitting, of course. A meal that usually consists of pastries, homemade plum and apricotKonfitüre and a wonderfully bitter strong coffee, all from the deli at the end of my street. I spend my mornings reading, have lunch at the same restaurant, and then spend my afternoons here, at the coast. It’s a new, familiar routine. And it’s mine. Nobody else has a say in what I do or where I go, I can lookafter myself, even though there’s a part of me that’s almost certain my father has sent protection of some form or another over here, they’re just very good at keeping their distance. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being over-paranoid, butknowing that the situation with Novak is nowhere near being resolved: knowing how little my father trusts Novak, I can’t be sure that he believes I’m safe. And maybe I’m not, but I really can look after myself. Look at the family I grew up in. I don’t need protection. I never did.

And you would never have met Bodie… Jonah.

Exactly.

Sitting down on a bench overlooking the beach I try, as always, to let my mind go blank, but it never does. My head’s too full of shit to allow me to completely switch off. I think about my family. I think about Stefan Novak.

My father.

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