Page 66 of Be Less Panda

Time to spring into action. Nancy collected the laptop from the desk in the kitchen and took it into her study just in case Em found an excuse to come back.

She took the letter out of her pocket again. It must be genuine. Why would anyone take the trouble to fake someone’s handwriting when they could easily type it on a computer and just copy the signature instead? And there was something about how the writer used words and phrases that was instantly familiar, even after 56 years apart.

But if Hans wanted to get in touch again, she needed to make sure it genuinely was him and find out what he’d been up to since she last saw him. For all her love of adventure, she didn’t like surprises.

He hadn’t given his address, just a phone number. She started by searching for that to see if it was his.

Nothing came up. He must be ex-directory, but most people were these days, so that didn’t prove a thing.

She searched for his name. 54 million results. Hardly surprising. Why couldn’t she have fallen for someone with a less common name?

She tried “Hans Schmidt Berlin” instead.

That narrowed it down to a mere 15 million results. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. She clicked on the images option in case there was a photo of him. There were many men of all ages, but none looked familiar. Though he would be 80 now. Would she recognise him from a recent photo?

And what if he wasn’t in Berlin? She looked more closely at the postmark. It was illegible, so there was no help there. But the postage stamp was German. That narrowed it down, but Germany was a big country.

She was just about to try searching for “Hans Schmidt importer” when Olivia phoned. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said as soon as Nancy answered.

‘Who says anything is wrong?’

‘I’ve had reports you were behaving strangely this morning. Jack texted me.’

‘If you call wanting to be on my own, behaving strangely, then yes, I suppose I have.’

‘Has someone upset you? You’re not normally one for seeking solitude.’

’No, I had a letter out of the blue.’

‘Ooh. Not bad news, I hope.’

‘No, it surprised me, that’s all.’

‘How intriguing. Are you going to tell me who it’s from?’

Nancy laughed. There was no way Olivia would let the topic go until she got every piece of information out of her, which, in this instance, would be helpful. ‘Hans.’

‘Hans?’ Oliva sounded shocked. ‘The amazing vanishing Hans?’

‘Yes. How many other people named Hans do you know?’

‘Good god, after all this time. What did he say?’

‘That he misses me. He always has.’

‘He should have thought of that before he did a moonlight flit.’ Olivia hadn’t had a good word to say about Hans since his disappearance, not that they’d discussed him in many years. Nancy had tried to forget about him completely, but there was always a nagging doubt in the back of her mind that something bad had happened to him, and they should’ve done more to find him. Olivia didn’t buy that at all. She just thought he was, at best, an idiot and, at worst, a lying bastard.

‘Apparently, there’s an explanation for that. He wants to meet me to tell me what happened. He suggested I phone him so we could make arrangements.’

Olivia sighed. ‘And why couldn’t he tell you in his letter? Or over the phone? Are you sure it’s not some sort of scam?’

‘No, I’m not sure. His letter contains lots of detail about what we did in Paris, but that might be a deliberate attempt to make me think it’s genuine. If he kept a diary, someone could have found it and used the information to fool me. That’s why I want to find out what he’s been up to since 1964. The letter says he waited until his wife died before he contacted me. Other than that, he doesn’t say how he’s spent the last 50-odd years. You’ve not kept in touch with Christa or Ingrid, have you?’

‘No. I exchanged Christmas cards with Christa for a few years, but they stopped when the children were young. Have you tried looking on Facebook?’

‘Not yet. But I guess it will be a similar story there. There are so many Hans Schmidts in the world.’

‘What you need is a professional. The private detective I used to spy on Isabella might be able to help. ‘