There is a sexual situation in this chapter. I might have to think about bumping the rating up ...

…

An hour later, feeling grainy-eyed with sleepiness and chilled to the core, Daryl arrived back at his apartment. It wasn't much; a single large room on the top floor of an old turn-of-the-century building. But he liked the high ceilings, the window he could shoot squirrels from, and the two exits in particular.

He'd lived there for several years, so it almost wasn't a surprise to find Merle sitting on the floor outside his door.

'Hey, baby brother. Long time no see.' Merle grinned up at him like it was nothing. Like he'd just popped by on a slow Sunday afternoon.

Daryl dug his key out of his pocket and unlocked his front door. Merle stood. His coat was ragged and Daryl could see a lot of grimy layers underneath it. Either things weren't going too well for Merle in the West or he'd dressed down in order to fit in.

The door was open, but neither brother made a move to go inside. Merle was still smiling, but uncertain. Daryl kept his face carefully blank.

'Where you been tonight, baby brother?' Merle asked. 'Got a woman?'

'If I got a woman you think I'd drag myself outta her bed on a fuckin' cold night like this? Get the fuck inside.'

He followed Merle into the room, watching him looking around, taking everything in. Nosy sonuvabitch. He wanted to tell him to get lost, that any closeness they had was long gone, but he needed to find out how Merle had known about the tunnel.

'What are you doin' here, Merle? Thought we had a deal. You get West Berlin and I get East. We even got a nice fence these days to remind us whose bit is whose.' Daryl took off his coat and kicked off his boots, and flung himself down on the mattress on the bare boards. While he watched Merle examine his window, his chair, and the junk on top of his chest of drawers he took the brandy out of his pocket and drank a slug.

'Missed you, Darylina.'

Goddamn, he hated that nickname. He'd been 'Darylina' ever since he'd told Merle he was done doing illegal shit. He didn't even know what calling him by a girl's name was supposed to mean. 'Real' men were all crims?

'I ain't missed you.'

Merle turned to him with an expansive smile. 'But I've changed my ways, baby brother. Problem is, I ain't got much clue about how to make a livin' on my side of the Wall. People don't want to hire a guy like me in the West. Thought I'd come back here where I'm guaranteed one.'

Daryl watched him narrowly. It was possible, he supposed. Merle never was one for hard work. Rather than clean up his image and learn some new skills it probably did seem easier to come back to East Germany where everyone was given a job and a basic wage.

'You're ain't a citizen anymore. You ain't got papers, nothin'. They ain't just gonna look over that.'

Merle shrugged. 'I'll claim asylum.'

Daryl shook his head. 'Ain't nobody fuckin' escapes into East Berlin these days. How'd you get in, anyway?'

Merle gave Daryl a knowing look. 'Wouldn't you like to know.'

…

'These are to go back into their respective files, and I need two copies of this on my desk by the end of the day.'

Beth took the stack of documents and the letter to copy from Commandant Blake. She'd been avoiding his eyes while she'd been in his office, feeling her face burning beneath his gaze. It was the memory of that kiss. The party was four days ago but she'd barely seen him since then. Yesterday she'd been too tired to think about him after her late night sitting up with Daryl, and then she'd had to go to her typing class. But today her tumultuous thoughts were back with a vengeance.

'Yes. Of course,' she said, and dared a glance at his face.

He broke into a smile. 'Why don't you sit down for a moment?'

She clutched the papers to her chest like they were a shield, her eyes wide as she looked at him. Then she lowered herself into the chair in front of his desk, her heart pounding. It wasn't just that he'd kissed her. It was the fact that she was getting close to two men who were enemies, and she was caught in the middle, not sure what to believe.

'I wanted to thank you for coming to the party with me the other night. They're not always the most interesting affairs, but having you with me made it quite lovely.'

She felt herself blush and looked down. 'You don't need to thank me. I – I enjoyed it very much.' That was a little bit of a fib. She hadn't really enjoyed the party, but she liked that he'd liked taking her.

'I think of you as my friend, Beth, and in my position I'm always looking to help my friends. It's one of the things that gives me great pleasure. Is there anything I can do for you, or your family?'

It was such a vague question that Beth didn't quite know what to make of it. Do for her? Did he mean materially? Legally? Now, there was a thought. Her father. 'Could you, perhaps – and I don't know whether this is the sort of thing you mean, but I would very much like –' She bit her lip. 'It's about my father,' she finished.

Commandant Blake nodded, his expression grave but sympathetic. 'Your father, of course. I understand he's in prison.'

She nodded. 'We don't know what he's been charged with and why, or how long he'll be in prison. My brother and sister and I would so much like to visit him, if we can.'

'That is a very distressing state of affairs. I can look into the charges, if you like, and try and arrange a visit?'

Beth's heart swelled. 'Would you? Really? We'd be so grateful.'

He smiled at her. 'It would be my pleasure.'

…

The commandant left the office in the late afternoon, bidding goodnight to both her and Frau Grimes. The two women worked in companionable silence for the rest of the afternoon. Beth was the first to leave and bid Frau Grimes goodbye.

She left the office and had been walking for ten minutes before she realised that she'd left the copies of the letter on her desk, not on the commandant's like she'd promised. After hesitating a moment, she turned round and headed back. They might be important, and she didn't want to knowingly leave a task undone.

The sixth floor was deserted when she got out of the elevator and she saw that the cover was over Frau Grimes's typewriter, so she must have gone home too. Beth took the copies of the letter off her desk and opened the commandant's door and went inside.

And stopped dead. It wasn't empty like she'd expected. Commandant Blake was there, and so was Frau Grimes. He had her pushed down over his desk, face first with her skirt rucked up around her hips. There was a look on his face unlike any she'd ever seen before, a sort of angry grimace, and he was flushed red. Frau Grimes looked resigned as he thrust into her, her elbows resting on the desktop.

Beth made a small sound, and they both looked up, startled. The letter dropped from her fingers, and she turned and fled.

She didn't slow down until she was outside again and she'd left the office far behind her. When she looked around she saw that she was halfway home already and her coat was unbuttoned. She did the buttons up with shaking hands.

'Wait up, factory girl. Been tryna catch up with you for three blocks.'

Beth turned and saw Daryl fall into step beside her.

'Need you to watch with me again,' he said. 'Not till late this time. Just a couple of hours.'

Beth took a deep breath. Her heart was beating fast after her panicked flight. Did she want to spend hours in a cold flat with Daryl? Not really. She felt like she wanted to go home and cry. But she couldn't think of a good excuse, and wasn't ready to face Maggie, so she nodded off they went.

…

'You okay, Beth?'

She looked up at the sound of Daryl's voice. He was frowning at her like he was worried, and he hadn't called her factory girl.

'I'm fine.'

He grunted and turned back to the window. 'Sure don't seem fine.'

She wasn't fine. She felt dirty and unsettled, and didn't understand what she'd seen. It was the commandant and Frau Grimes having sex, that she knew, but why were they doing it like that, so brutally, and what about her boyfriend Comrade Walsh?

'Beth?'

'Sorry?'

'I said, would you like some coffee. What's got into you?' He sat forward, looking at her closely. 'You upset about somethin'?'

She shook her head. 'No, not really.'

'Yeah, you are,' he muttered. 'I'm gonna make us some coffee. Keep an eye on the bakery, okay?'

Beth looked out onto the street, trying to concentrate on the people that were walking by. Her mind kept taking her back to the scene in the office, though, and she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd done something shameful, even though all she'd done was walk into a room.

Daryl handed her a mug and sat down again, sipping his. He was silent a long time, just watching her. She could see him out of the corner of her eye as she watched the street.

'What's rattled you?' he said at last. 'Blake?' When she didn't answer he said, 'Is he trying to get you to do somethin'? Say somethin'?'

She shook her head and took a deep, shuddering breath. 'It's nothing to do with anything. And yet I can't get it out of my head. I – I think I've been quite stupid about things.'

Daryl was silent a long time, just drinking his coffee.

'I went back to the office after work today,' she said finally. 'I forgot to put a letter on the commandant's desk that he'd asked for. The office seemed empty so I just walked right in and I saw – saw him and Frau Grimes in there.' She gave him a meaningful look. Please don't make me say it.

Daryl nodded slowly, seeming to understand what Beth was saying. 'Confrontin',' he said.

Beth felt her face crease up and tears spill down her face. She sat forward, covering her face with her hand, embarrassed. Daryl didn't reach out her to her or say anything. She dabbed her eyes on the sleeve of her coat and sniffled, trying to stop.

'Why you cryin', Beth?' he asked finally.

'I don't know,' she said thickly. 'I've never seen anything like that before. And I was thinking how kind he's been to me, and that I was afraid of the Stasi until I started to get to know him, and now I realised I don't know him at all. He is frightening.'

Daryl took her coffee from her and reached for her handbag. 'You got a hankie in here?' She nodded and he pulled it out and passed it to her. Then he took off his coat, placed it over her knees and gave her her coffee back. 'You got a shock,' he said. 'That's all.'

She nodded, wiping her face and taking a deep breath. 'It was awful, like a bad dream. I've never seen anyone look like that before. The look on his face, sort of angry and cruel.'

'He was forcing her?'

'I don't think so. She looked sort of resigned. Like it had happened before and she was waiting for it to be over.'

She was silent for a while, watching the street outside. After a few minutes she said, 'Glenn asked me that first night why Frau Grimes was being so nice to me. Maggie told him off, sayin' that people could be nice. It didn't have to be for a reason. I wonder, if it's been going on for some time between her and Blake, and I sort of feel like it has, whether she thought that with me around …' Beth looked down at the mug in her lap. 'She's said things like he likes these sorts of clothes and that I should try to please him. I thought she just wanted to help me keep my job.'

Beth glanced at Daryl and there was a hard expression in his eyes as he watched the street.

'I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it,' she said.

'I don't think you are.'

Beth felt sick. Take her place as Blake's mistress. Have him look at her like that. She shuddered. 'It was like they hated each other. I've never – I haven't –' She bit her lip, trying to say that she'd never been with a man before but too wretched to say the words. 'I didn't think it would be like that. So angry. I had it in my head that it would be sort of … romantic or something.'

'It can be a lot of things,' Daryl said. 'Ain't gotta be hateful. Is what you make of it.'

Beth chewed on a nail and looked out of the window. 'Why do you want me here, Daryl?' she asked eventually. She wasn't being much help and surely she couldn't be the only one he could ask.

'Why are you here?' he countered.

She shrugged. 'I don't know. I just got this feeling that something isn't right. Out there, you know. In our city. I'm trying to figure it out, as fast as I can. Things aren't adding up for me. But sitting here, I wonder what I'm doing. I feel useless.'

'Maybe I'm givin' you some time to think.'

She put her head on one side and looked at him. Yes, maybe he was. But he wasn't telling her what to think. He was probably the only person who hadn't done that lately. The government told her she should be happy and Maggie and Glenn wanted her to leave with them. The commandant and Frau Grimes were manipulating her.

She looked out the window. If she had time to think, she may as well use it.

…

Beth lapsed into silence after that, and Daryl noticed that she did her best to keep her eyes on the street but her attention drifted every few minutes. Daryl kept one eye on her and another on the bakery. He knew she'd had a shock – anyone would, but particularly someone as innocent of the world as she was. He wanted to beat Blake till he was bloody for letting Beth walk in on them like that. But maybe it the best thing for her to see in the circumstances. People could show one face while concealing another. She needed to learn that.

Better she see what being Blake's mistress would be like before she found herself over that desk herself. Jesus Christ, his blood boiled when he thought about that.

Beth looked back at him after a while. Her face was pale, like moonlight on snow. 'Where's your brother?'

Daryl looked over at her. 'Makin' a goddamn nuisance of himself, that's where.' He was holed up in Daryl's apartment drinking 'shitty communist whisky' and railing against the capitalist bastards who wouldn't give him a job. None of the world's leading political systems seemed to suit him that week.

'Are you happy he's back?'

'Nope.'

She raised her eyebrows, but he stared hard out the window. He didn't know what to think about Merle being in East Berlin himself.

Beth changed tack. Seemed like she'd done her thinking and now she wanted to talk. 'Why do you do the things you do? I mean, stay, when you could leave yourself?'

'Ain't nothin' for me on that side of the Wall.'

'There was your brother.'

'He left a long time ago. Would have gone before they built the Wall, if I'd wanted to.'

'But why not want to?'

She wasn't just asking out of nosiness, he knew. She had family on both sides of the Wall. It was gonna be hard for her to choose. Hadn't been hard for him, though. 'When I woke up in August that same mornin' as the rest of East Berlin and saw that barbed wire, I thought, that's it. I'll never see him again. Thought it would be that simple for everyone, but then I started meetin' people who had their goddamn hearts near broke by that fuckin' Wall, and I thought, if they want to be over there, and I can help 'em, I'm gonna get 'em over there. Sort of felt like it was my job seeing as I was going to stay.'

She was silent a long time. Looking out the window, she whispered, 'I don't think I can go. Even for Maggie and Glenn, I don't think I can do it.'

The look on her face was so guilty. So ashamed. Like she was confessing to leaving someone behind, not staying where she was. He got that. People you loved were somewhere, even if that person was goddamn Merle, you felt guilty if you didn't try to be with them.

Maggie and Glenn were going to go. He could see it in their eyes, that they were hungry for it. Beth could see that too, he was sure, so it had to be eatin' her up to know that she didn't want go with them.

'It's not just daddy and Shawn being here, thought that's a big part of it. I just can't see myself over there. And if there are people over here who need help, people like Ana, then I think I'd be happier doing that.'

Daryl dug his cigarettes out of his pocket and offered her one, looking her over. He'd known there was something different about her. Something courageous along with that vulnerability. And he was kinda tired of getting people across the Wall all by himself. Being the only one who wasn't counting the days till he could slip past those gates to a new life on the other side.

He held out a lighter and lit the f6 for her. 'Then stay here with me,' he said.