Chapter Fifteen
Amira was well used to feeling uncomfortable; she’d been a Jew hidden in Germany for much of her life, after all. But walking into the lobby of the Hotel Kaiserhof and asking for the room of Mr Maxi Richter, her wedding band clearly displayed on her finger as she folded her arms, was perhaps the most uncomfortable she’d ever been. She knew that the staff would simply presume she was looking for her newly returned husband, but still, she was deeply embarrassed and trying desperately hard for her fear not to show on her face. It was so unlikely that she’d see anyone she knew, because she knew so few people in Berlin, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the wives she’d met at the concert, about how a split second of being seen could jeopardise everything. But she had a cover story – she was visiting a cousin. So long as she stuck to it and wasn’t seen doing anything inappropriate, everything would be fine.
It was late afternoon by now, because she had no way to contact Maxi and hadn’t known what time to arrive, and her stomach was a ball of knots as she was directed to the elevator, standing there while the button to his floor was pressed by the operator. And even once she was alone, walking quietly across the soft carpet and inspecting the numbers on each door, she was still a bundle of nerves.
This is Maxi , she told herself. There is nothing at all to be nervous about.
But when she lifted her hand to knock at the door and he opened it within seconds, her nerves didn’t dissipate. At least not until he took her hand and led her into the room, closing the door behind them.
‘I thought you’d never come,’ he whispered, as he leaned down to press a soft kiss to her lips.
Maxi’s hair was still damp from a shower, his skin clean-shaven and soft, and she found herself lifting a hand to press her palm against his cheek as she kissed him back.
Maxi eventually pulled away from her and stared down into her eyes. ‘As much as I’d like to stay in this room for the next two hours, may I take you out for an early dinner?’ he asked. ‘We can be very respectable and pretend we are cousins seeing each other while I’m home on leave.’
‘Cousins?’ she asked, grinning back at him.
‘It’s all I could come up with,’ he replied, stepping into her and kissing her again.
‘Cousins it is then,’ she murmured, trying to ignore the little knot of worry inside that told her she needed to be careful.
Later that night, after a lovely dinner at the hotel, Amira sat up in bed, in her nightdress and with the covers pulled up high, and watched as Maxi slowly undressed.
‘You haven’t told me what happened to your arm,’ she said.
Maxi took off his sling and left it on the chair, before sitting to take off his boots. He looked exhausted.
‘You have no idea what a luxury it is to take my boots off to sleep,’ he said. ‘At one point, I don’t think I’d taken my socks and boots off for two weeks.’
‘You’ve been sleeping—’
‘Wherever we could lay our heads,’ he said, his fingers fumbling over the laces.
She wanted to go to him and help, but she could see that he was frustrated and she didn’t want to make it worse.
‘Your arm . . .’ she said again.
He cleared his throat and unbuttoned his shirt as he spoke, and it wasn’t until he was sitting there in his undershirt that she saw the true extent of his injuries. He had a scar that ran across one shoulder and disappeared beneath the cotton, and on his arm there were criss-crosses that were a dark pink and looked almost as if they’d been drawn there.
Amira pushed the covers back and got out of bed, slowly going over to him. She lowered herself to his knee, sitting across his lap as she traced her fingertips over first the scarring on his shoulder, and then his arm.
‘Does this hurt?’ she asked.
‘No.’ His voice was gravelly, and she couldn’t tell if it was from pain or because their skin was touching and it was something he hadn’t felt in such a long time.
‘How about this?’
This time he groaned and caught her wrist in his hand. ‘It doesn’t hurt anymore, but when it happened...’
She tucked closer to him as he let go of her, looping her arms around his neck and nestling her head into his collarbone.
‘One minute I was talking to two of the other men in my unit, and the next they were lying on the ground and all I could feel was that my skin was on fire, as if someone had shot a burning hot arrow into me.’
‘You were shot?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘There was an explosion, and parts of the shrapnel lodged into my skin. And as I stood there trying to get my bearings, looking for my men, I was shot in the shoulder.’
‘Which is why I didn’t hear from you for so long,’ she murmured. ‘Why you were reported missing.’
‘I dropped to the ground and looked around, feeling everywhere for them, but it wasn’t until it was too late that I realised what had happened,’ Maxi said. ‘They were gone. All of them were gone.’
She held on to him even tighter as his shoulders trembled.
‘I was one of the only men left, there were just a few of us staggering around, and we fired in retaliation for as long as we could before retreating,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t slept properly since, I keep seeing them and remembering what happened, knowing that when I go back...’
Tears formed in her eyes and his body stilled, as if he’d stopped breathing. But eventually he cleared his throat again and found his voice.
‘When I go back I’ll be with a new unit, and I have to keep going as if I didn’t lose all the men I knew. One unit sustains losses and they fall back, and another unit moves in so there are fresh troops. It’s just a never-ending rotation of men stepping forward and dying, or at least that’s what it feels like out there.’
‘I wish there was something I could do,’ she said, stroking his hair and pressing kisses to his face.
‘When I came home and found out that you were married, I wished that I’d just died that day, because you were all I was coming home to,’ Maxi said. ‘But now, I’m starting to think about all those men who went on leave and didn’t come back at all.’
She looked up at him. ‘Where did they go?’
‘Nobody knows. They just disappeared so they didn’t have to fight again,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking that we could do that. We could disappear together.’
‘If only it were that easy.’ She imagined that he wanted to fantasise about it with her, but it wasn’t something she even wanted to indulge in thoughts of. There was no way they could ever disappear – they’d be caught and deported, she had no doubt about that.
‘Come to bed,’ she said, standing and holding out her hand to him. ‘I promise you’ll be able to sleep soundly in my arms.’
But the way he looked at her, as his hand slipped into hers and he stood beside her, wasn’t the look of a man who wanted to go to sleep. He stepped closer and leaned down, raising his palm to her face, cupping her cheek and gently rubbing his thumb against her skin as he lowered his lips to hers. Maxi’s kiss stole her breath, and she found herself pressed against him as his arms circled her, and he pulled her soft body to his and claimed her mouth.
Maxi kissed her with an urgency that she understood, because she knew as well as he that their time together was finite. At any moment the air raid sirens could sound out, and when he left again to return to the Front, there was no promise that he would survive until next time.
‘Climb into bed,’ she whispered, holding out her hand to him.
Much to her delight, Maxi didn’t need to be asked twice.
When Amira woke in the early hours, Maxi was sound asleep, tucked beneath the covers and sleeping like a child. She lay there and watched him in the dark, once her eyes had adjusted, and she wondered how long it had been since he’d been able to sleep like that; peacefully, without worrying what might happen while his eyes were shut. Was it one of the last nights they’d had together, or had there been times before his injuries when he’d been able to slumber while he was away?
She reached out and gently traced her thumb across his forehead and down his cheek, wanting to commit every inch of him to memory before he left. But missing him wasn’t the only thing circling her mind; she couldn’t stop wondering what would happen after, when she was faced with the very real decision to tell him the truth about her past. Because as much as she adored him, and as much as she knew that he loved her, she didn’t know whether he’d still love her once he found out, and it wasn’t a part of her she intended on hiding if the Allies won the war. She didn’t want to keep that part of her hidden, not if she didn’t have to.
‘Is anything the matter?’ Maxi whispered, his eyes seeking out hers as she stared at his face.
‘Everything is fine,’ she whispered back, blinking away tears, grateful for the darkness. For now, at least. ‘Go back to sleep.’
She shut her own eyes, cocooned in Maxi’s arms, his warm breath on her shoulder and her long hair loose and splayed over his arm, as she told herself to just sleep, and worry about the rest once he was gone.