Page 41 - My Story

have it with him, so he called and asked me to bring it to him. Helen and Susan were away playing with
friends, this was pre-Toby, so I put a sleeping Hilary onto the back seat, found Peter’s passport and set
off. I was stopped, and my passport examined going through to Holland – it must have been a special day
– but I met Peter, handed over his passport and set off for home. By this time Hilary had awoken and was
standing in the back chatting and singing. We were stopped again at passport control and the officer
peered in and said, “Where did the child come from? You’ve just passed through here and had no child
in the car. Where did you get her?”. He took some convincing that I had not just kidnapped a child and
when I arrived home, some half hour after Peter, he could not believe we had been stuck at the border!

Peter was becoming less and less thrilled with the job and with his boss in particular. I urged him
to hand in his notice. We thought about it but were sure he’d find something else. After all, everyone
worked, everyone had a job. He left Vista. Hans Bach immediately offered him a job, but he refused it,
his feeling being that he would never be his own man working for someone as powerful as Hans. I think
he was right.

He applied for agencies and franchises. I remember the Blue Bird Tit Feeder and the bed pan
washer. We fell about, laughing. Eventually, he interviewed with Brother in their industrial sewing
machine division and got the job.

The new job was in Frankfurt which meant a move, new schools, probably new friends and, oh
dear, a new baby sitter. Elisabeth had been with us to England the previous summer when we had rented
a small house by the sea at Herne Bay, near Birchington. She was always such a sensible, mature girl and
enjoyed my children and knew how to keep them amused.

Peter went off to Frankfurt and started the new job. He enjoyed the people and the job. He found
us a brand-new house to rent in a village, Wehrheim, not too far from his work. It had been built by a
forester and his wife ready for his retirement and they were hoping to recoup some of the money they
had spent on it before they moved in.

The move from Kleve was frantic. Peter was not there but was going to come and drive us all
south later in the day. We ordered the same removal company, Heeck, who had moved us from England.
They came to me with the bad news that as we were on the main road, they could only get permission to
park from 5 – 8 am. On the day of the move I woke the children up, we dressed, I let in the removal people
and then the children and I took a picnic into the park and played there until I could decently take them
to the people who had agreed to look after them and get them to school or kindergarten. I think it was
Inge who took two-year-old Toby. I then returned to the flat. The removal people had finished, and I set
to cleaning up. Ursula Wiegand came over and helped. By two o’clock I had collected my children and
we stood in the empty, immaculate flat, surrounded by our suitcases, waiting for Peter. He arrived, looked
around and said, “But you’ve left the picture hooks in the walls and now I don’t have my tools”. I have
never been closer to committing murder!

Wehrheim was a pretty village. We lived at the far end of Töpferstrasse. There were two more
houses after us and then a field. Across the road to the right was a small farm with a big steaming muck
heap (Misthouven) outside its front door and across the street to the left, well, a little way down, was
Bäker Pfeiffer who made the best donuts (Berliner) I have ever eaten.

The house was spacious, compared with any of the other homes we’d had. It had lovely tiled
floors, a balcony overlooking the street outside the large living room, a basement with a playroom for the
children where they never played because it was spidery, and a sewing room for me, which did not seem
to be spidery.

We busied ourselves, unpacking. Two children came to the door and introduced themselves as
Astrid and Jo Diesner. Astrid was the older of the two and Jo was just a year older than Helen. They
explained that they lived in the last house and their grandmother was in between with the woodyard.
They had a younger brother who Toby might enjoy, called Wolfram.

The next morning, I was getting breakfast when the phone rang. “Guten Morgen, I am the Diesners’
grandmother and I have your son here. He’s quite safe but I am just making breakfast for my workers and

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