Page 30 of Hearts of Resistance
‘You need to hide. Now,’ she said, her voice wobbling. ‘They...’
When she looked into Alex’s eyes, her chin wobbled, and then a wailing sob erupted from deep within her as tears streamed down her cheeks and she fell to her knees. Alex dropped with her, cradling her and holding her tight to his chest.
‘Shhh, it’s okay. What happened?’ he asked, rocking her as if he were comforting a small child.
Sophia cried and cried, let go of every emotion she’d been holding back since she’d left her family home. Alex kept holding her, mouth to her hair as he stroked her back.
‘Tell me? Why are you back? What’s happened?’
‘My mother,’ she eventually said, her breath coming out in a big shudder. ‘He’s killed her. My father, he...’
Alex held her back, looked straight into her eyes. ‘Your father killed her?’
‘She was hiding a family. A Jewish family,’ Sophia explained, wiping at her cheeks and brushing her fingertips across her lashes. ‘I got there and he killed them all. She was hanging with them,with children, strung up by their necks.’ The picture of them all up there, of what she’d watched, what she’d seen, was crippling.
Alex pulled her close again and she hugged him back, but she knew they didn’t have a lot of time. If her father or anyone else suspected that she could be doing the same as her mother, then they could arrive any moment.
‘We need to get rid of any evidence, any trace that you’ve been here.’ It was only now that she thought about Greta and their other servants. Would they be interrogated, too? Would her father actually be foolish enough to presume that they’d had knowledge of the Jewish family? That they’d helped to conceal them? She couldn’t stand the thought of the women she’d known her entire life being questioned and tortured.
‘I’ve been writing a diary,’ he said, jolting her back into the present. ‘I should have told you. I took one of your notebooks.’
‘Keep it on your body,’ she said, standing up. ‘Any clothes, well, I’ll be able to talk my way around those, say they’re my boyfriend’s if I have to. I’ll deal with that. Are you sure there’s nothing else?’
Alex shook his head. ‘I have a photograph in my pocket. There’s nothing else.’
It was awful to think they’d lived together for so long, yet Alex had nothing personal in the apartment.
She crossed the room and looked at her reflection. She was a mess. She had an excuse, and she wanted nothing more than to grieve for her mother, but she needed to pull herself together and get Alex and herself to safety. She needed to find out if there was any way of smuggling him out, if the train that would be taking the next load of Jews out of Berlin had left yet or not. And she needed to disappear herself, because no matter what happened, she couldn’t stay.
She fixed her hair and wiped at her eyes, applying make-up to conceal her puffy red skin. She glanced at Alex, saw the concern etched on his face.
Thump, thump, thump.
Sophia’s heart pounded as knocks echoed out.
‘Open the door!’
She met Alex’s terrified gaze as her hands started to shake again. There were only a few moments to answer before the door was broken down, she knew that, and the last thing she wanted was to look like she was hiding something.
‘One moment!’ she called out, watching frantically as Alex skidded on the timber floor in his hurry to hide and she ran to the door, pressed against it as if she could physically hold off the men on the other side.
‘Open it now or we break it down!’
A single tear slid down her cheek as her mother’s beautiful face flooded her memories. Everything she did from this step forward, she was going to do for her.
‘I’m coming!’
Sophia reluctantly unlocked the door and slowly turned the handle, too afraid to look back and see where Alex was. Usually she made certain he was hidden first, made sure he was safe as could be, but not this time. The officers wouldn’t wait that long, and if they were forced to smash her door down, they’d be relentless, certain she was hiding something or someone.
‘Excuse me, but what are you doing here?’ Sophia asked, summoning every ounce of strength she had and blocking the doorway, buying Alex more time.
‘Move aside.’
She’d feared the Gestapo for a long time, but her fear was almost paralysing now.
She looked at their faces, the men standing there in uniform, smirking; or maybe she was imagining their amusement at her situation. She didn’t know any more, her pain too deep, clouding her judgment.
‘Do you have any idea who my father is? How dare you!’ she said.
