Page 36 of The Berlin Sisters
‘Where will my sister be working?’ David asked, coming to stand behind her.
‘At a grocer’s in the city. They’re good people and they’ll take good care of her. They’re people who’ve been deeply involved in the resistance from the very beginning, according to my father.’ She looked at Ava, then her parents, and finally back at David. ‘My father will say that she wants to help Germans, but that she has no formal training as a nurse or teacher. It will be a good cover for her choosing to work there, for the greater good.’
‘You promise me she’ll be safe?’
Ava nodded to him. ‘I hope so, David.’
It simply wasn’t a promise she was willing to make.
Two hours later, after leaving Eliana with her family to eat dinner before going back for her, they stood in her room as Eliana tried clothes on. She’d always been slender, but having not used her muscles properly for so long and no doubt fretting constantly, she was swimming in Ava’s clothes. They certainly didn’t appear tailored, as they should have.
‘I thought this might be an occasion for hot chocolate,’ Hanna said, walking into the room with a tray of mugs.
‘Well, we’re going to be up half the night sewing,’ Ava said, gratefully taking one from the tray. ‘So thank you, it’s exactly what I need.’
‘I feel so guilty, being down here, acting like normal again while David and my parents are up there,’ Eliana whispered. ‘It feels so wrong. It feels like when I first left them, when I had to leave David behind in our apartment. We’ve always been so close, and I kept thinking then that he’d have never left without me.’
Ava and Hanna exchanged glances, but it was her sister who spoke first.
‘Remember that you will be doing work that might eventually free them. If there was a way for David to join us safely, I would have insisted we utilise him, too. Perhaps we still can, actually.’
‘How so?’ Eliana asked.
‘How is his typing?’
Eliana laughed as she turned her back so Ava could do the buttons up on another dress. ‘Terrible. But he’s a quick study and he’s desperately in need ofsomethingto do.’
‘Then leave it with me. I shall find a typewriter and something useful for him to do. Something to keep his mind busy, so that he can feel as if he’s contributing.’
Ava noticed the way Eliana smiled, the way her shoulders straightened at the very idea that her brother might have a role, after all. If there was anything she could personally do to get himout of the attic, Ava would have, but at the very least she knew she’d find him the gun he’d asked for. All David wanted was a way to protect his family, and she intended on giving it to him. It was the least she could do.
‘When do I start work at the grocer’s?’ Eliana asked.
‘Monday,’ Ava said. ‘We’ll have a car to take us back to the city early in the morning, and I’ll take you there myself before work. You’re simply to provide an extra set of hands, and if anyone asks, you are to say you didn’t want to be idle.’
‘And they’re people I can trust? People who will know who I really am?’
Ava nodded. ‘They will know you’re Jewish, if that’s what you’re asking, and that you need to be protected. But they will know nothing of your family name or your past, to protect them as much as you.’ She paused. ‘And us.’
Eliana turned before them in the dress and both she and Hanna groaned. It was no exaggeration to say that it would take them all night to create a wardrobe fit for a young woman who was to be their wealthy cousin from Munich. But there was no disputing that Eliana looked beautiful, and by the time they’d coloured her hair blonde and put a little make-up on her, Ava doubted even an SS man would be able to walk past her in the street without turning his head.
Chapter Thirteen
HANNA
A few weeks later, Hanna sat behind the wheel of the ambulance, cursing Dieter for not showing up to work. No one seemed to know where he was, which was highly unusual as he’d never not shown up before, which meant that she was going to have to go out alone. She’d received a message days earlier about two children needing to be smuggled out of Berlin, and she’d been hiding their papers in her jacket ever since.
The bombings around the country had become more targeted, with factories often hit by the Allies, and the message had been clear: the next time a factory within two hours of Berlin was hit, they were to drive as close to the building as they could, and the children would be brought out for her to transport. It was a much longer drive than they were usually tasked with, which brought with it even more dangers, and it was one of the reasons she’d have preferred to have been doing it with Dieter rather than alone.
Hanna had been comfortable with the plan when it was mentioned to her, other than the fact the children were having to wait for potentially weeks to be rescued. But in the end it didn’t take long for another factory to be hit – Magdeburg had been the target of so many of the Allies’ air raids, after all. The problem now wasthat she would either have to drive the ambulance herself or risk someone realising what she was doing if another nurse or driver came with her, and it would be almost impossible to explain why she was driving so far to assist with the injured there. So she’d chosen not to tell anyone at the hospital that Dieter wasn’t there, pretending he was waiting outside for her to join him, and she walked out with her nursing bag as she usually would.
She waited for a moment to check that no one else was coming out of the hospital, before starting the engine and manoeuvring her way out on to the street. She wasn’t used to driving it, but one thing she did have was determination, and there was no way she was letting Dieter not turning up to work be the reason that two children missed their chance of escape.
An hour later, and clutching the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles had turned white, Hanna moved past the fire trucks and soldiers, and parked as close as she could to what was left of the factory. What had once been a building was now a smouldering pile of charred timber and ashes, reduced to rubble, but what disturbed her most were the bodies lined up on the ground. Given the number of them, she wondered if there had been any survivors at all.
‘Help!’ someone yelled, carrying a child in their arms and running from the closest home to the factory. It had a hole through the side, as if it were a doll’s house that had an opening to peep through.
Another person appeared, carrying another child, and Hanna quickly got out of the ambulance and opened the back up.
