Loud rumbling behind me hit me like a flash. Why didn’t it struck me immediately? I had to have recognized it immediately.

The clang of glasses on the ground, the metal noise of the tray that still swung on the wooden floor like a spinning top which seemed to turn itself faster and faster and in whose rhythm also my thoughts, my memories circled, faster and faster, so I became a little dizzy. They had to be quite some glasses that smashed up there, however, I did not want to turn round, because I knew that this one movement would change everything. Nevertheless, I had no choice; I could badly stare at the picture until the end of time. So I slowly turned around in the expectation that what I would see was more than only a picture from the past, more than the nightmarish feeling of wanting to vanish to the ground, more than I would ever have been able to foresee or expect.

I will never forget her shattered expression, with eyes wide open, the mouth half-open, not able to move or even say a word. The tray to her feet and the glass splinters around her. You would really imagine somebody, looking like that, who has just seen a ghost. The seconds became minutes as we both still stood there, trying to understand what had just happened.

Maybe I even was a ghost. The copy of a person who has lived sometimes, who had a family and friends, who was respected, who has loved and was loved. The copy of a person who had disappeared 2 years ago for the rest of the world without a trace, exactly like she has. Was she my reflection? Bette Porter didn’t exist any more and therefore we were actually absolutely foreign to each other and, nevertheless, … My new life, my new surroundings, my new job, even my new name … all this was suddenly so insignificant, because the woman who faced her there was more Bette Porter than ever before.

The picture … for years it used to hang on the back left wall at the Planet. It was a work of Marina from her youth when she had still painted. I once asked her why she would have hung just this picture at her cafe and she said: „ This is a part of my past which I may never forget, so that I have a future. “

"Part of the past"…"never forget"…"a future“… and today, at this moment as we looked at each other, I understood the real significance of these words.