Page 84 of Hearts of Resistance
‘They’re here! The Americans are here!’
She held Hazel’s hand, sitting still, hoping they wouldn’t be killed before they were saved.
‘We’re going to make it!’ Hazel said softly to her, her tear-stained cheeks a contrast to the brightness of her eyes.
‘We are,’ she whispered back, grasping her hand and rocking back and forth. Could they truly make it out of this alive?
They weren’t going to die. They weren’t going to die!
‘They’ve really come for us.’ Hazel’s words were barely loud enough to hear. Rose watched her as she stared straight ahead, before leaping to catch her as she sobbed and fell forward.
‘They’re going to save us, Hazel,’ she said. ‘The Americans are here!’
Rose breathed deep and gripped Hazel’s hand.
‘I want to go home,’ Hazel said quietly back. ‘I want to go home to London. I want to see my family and lie in my own bed.’
Rose understood. She craved home, too, even if everything would be different than before. She wanted to eat, to forget the deep gnaw of hunger in her belly that pained her every minute of every hour of every day.
A series of bangs echoed out as shots were fired outside. The door to their crammed cell opened and a soldier rushed forward.
‘Harry?’ Hazel muttered.
‘Hazel, get up!’ Rose ordered, wondering if her friend was becoming delirious. Why would she think Harry was here?
Hazel blinked up at her, eyes wide.
‘Get up!’ Rose said again. ‘Quickly!’
She scurried to her feet and Rose got a tight hold of her arm. It was over. Their nightmare in the prison was over.
Tears streamed down her cheeks and made her choke as she held tight to Hazel and watched the commotion around them, the world spinning as she tried to focus, tried to digest the reality that they’d been so close to death. The soldier scooped Hazel up, and Rose somehow managed to walk beside him as they moved through the prison. Outside, her eyes teared up from the bright light. She was squinting hard as if she’d never seen the sun before.
She looked across at Hazel, saw her matted hair and her bruised face, her cheeks so gaunt. How had they managed to survive?
‘It’s over,’ she told Hazel, collapsing into her friend as the soldier left them, calling out orders. There were soldiers everywhere and her head started to spin as she tried to watch them, tried to figure out what was going on.
‘It’s over,’ Hazel muttered back. ‘We’re going to make it home. We’re going to be fine.’
Rose started to laugh, her ribs screaming in protest at the movement. They were going home!
‘Vive la France!’she whispered.
Hazel laughed back, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Vive la Franceindeed.’
EPILOGUE
PARIS, FRANCE
1945
ROSE
When Rose had first learned that Peter had died, she’d felt as if her world had ended. Darkness had engulfed her, snatched away her happiness and with it any excitement or anticipation about the future. But walking now to the little memorial she’d made, her tears were replaced by a smile, the sadness she’d carried all those years barely a whisper against her skin. Just as her time in prison, the pain and suffering she’d endured before being rescued and finally sent home, was like a silent murmur in her mind that she was mostly able to ignore.
She smiled when she looked down at the little girl whose hand she was holding.Herlittle girl. Coming home to find that her brother and sister-in-law had both been killed hadn’t surprised her, not given their work with the Resistance. But finding out they’d had a daughter and that Charlotte had given birth and smuggled her back to Paris, that she’d found Maria and begged Rose’s old maid to keep her safe? That she and Charlotte must have been pregnant at the same time without her knowing? That had been the biggest surprise of her life. And Francesca was like the daughter she’d never had, a reminder of Sebastian with her thick dark hair and even darker eyes, and Rose felt like she now had something,someone, to live for.
She’d been holding Francesca’s hand, the little girl happy to toddle along beside her, stopping a hundred times or more to touch a blade of grass or admire a bird in a tree, or sometimes even to pick a flower. Nothing had ever felt more special than having her palm clasped to Francesca’s, her wonder at everything giving Rose a new perspective on the world through the eyes of a toddler.
