Chapter Sixteen Aletta #2
‘It’s so good to see you again,’ Cecilia said. ‘Life’s been so boring without you.’
Aletta smiled. ‘Same here. Every little thing that’s happened, I’ve wished you were here to talk to. I’ve hated every second without you.’
‘But teaching is going well? Your class are all . . .’
Aletta shook her head, knowing what her friend was asking. ‘I’ve lost all my Jewish children now. Some of them disappeared even before the occupation, and no one has ever heard from them or their families again.’
‘I’m sorry, Aletta, truly I am. I know how much you adore all those children.’
They sat for a moment, holding hands, and Aletta had never been more grateful for her friend.
Cecilia sighed then, and drained what was left in her coffee cup. ‘On that note, I have to go. My mother said I was to go to the shop and then come straight home, so she’s going to be furious with me for taking so long.’
‘How long are you back for?’
‘Only two days, and then I’m back to the country again.
’ Cecilia paused. ‘I know I sound dreadful complaining so much, but I just hate being there. I miss you, I miss college, I miss my old life. I just want this war to be over with.’ She laughed.
‘To think that I moaned about studying months ago. I’d give anything to go back. ’
They stood and hugged, and Aletta fretted all over again about whether she should just confess to Cecilia and drag her through to meet Harry, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the promise she’d made to her father, but perhaps she wasn’t ready to share Harry with the world yet, anyway.
‘It was so good to see you,’ Aletta said as she hugged her friend goodbye.
‘You too,’ Cecilia said, hugging her back just as fiercely. ‘You know, I half expected you to say that you’d joined the Resistance after I left. I kept thinking about that look on your face when I told you about it all.’
Aletta laughed. ‘You think I’m far braver than I am,’ she said, feeling as if she were committing a sin by lying to her yet again.
Cecilia turned to leave, and Aletta waved goodbye from the door, calling out to her as she left. But when she closed the door and locked it, she stood with her back to the wall for a long minute before sliding all the way down to the floor, tears flooding her eyes.
She wanted to run after Cecilia and confess it all to her, to tell her she was sorry for lying, but she couldn’t. So instead, she gathered her thoughts, wiped away her tears and decided to make coffee and return to Harry. But when she looked up, he was standing there in the hallway, watching her.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, his eyebrows drawn together.
Aletta brushed her cheeks with her fingertips again and quickly rose, not wanting him to see her upset.
‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a coffee and bring it in. Maybe we could play cards again?’
Harry watched her for a long moment before nodding. ‘You’re certain everything’s all right?’
Aletta fixed a smile and fought the tremble of her bottom lip as she tried not to think about Cecilia and the lies she’d told. ‘Nothing that a game of cards can’t fix. I’ll be in soon.’
Aletta whistled as she ran up the stairs, smiling to herself as she thought about what she’d just done.
This had been a good week. She’d taught each day and worked on not one but two papers for the Resistance in the evenings, and her heart was full from spending so much time with Harry – she only wished that she’d been able to introduce him to Cecilia, because she knew her friend would have loved him.
Tonight, she’d dashed out to make her delivery, relieved when nothing had been mentioned about exactly how the Resistance was planning to smuggle Harry back to England, which she knew was selfish.
But still, she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it.
The occupation was terrifying, but if she were honest, she’d been scared ever since Cecilia had left.
But Harry . . . Harry had changed everything.
But as Aletta took the last couple of steps, still smiling to herself, she suddenly froze. The door to her apartment was open. Wide open.
Waiting for a moment, she listened, her heart hammering away so loudly she could barely hear a thing. But then came the unmistakable, thick German accent that she’d dreaded.
Aletta knew she had two options; she could either run back down the stairs and disappear into the night, knowing in her heart that her parents would want her to keep safe at all costs.
But doing that would mean potentially hiding until after curfew, which could lead to her arrest, and it would also mean abandoning her parents, and Harry, when they needed her the most. Her other option was to walk calmly into the apartment as if nothing were amiss.
She chose the latter.
Aletta took a deep breath and then another, and walked to the door.
She softly cleared her throat and stepped into the apartment, seeing the alarmed look on her mother’s face that told her she would most definitely have wanted Aletta to pick the other option.
But she was here now, where she was supposed to be, and she smiled as sweetly as she could at the two SS men standing in her living room even though her heart felt as if it were going to beat straight out of her chest.
Unfortunately, the men didn’t return her smile.
Whatever she’d just walked into wasn’t the type of discussion they’d had last time, and that steady breath she’d just taken was long forgotten as she suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe.
Because she realised that both of her parents were silent, and both of the men were predator-like in the way they were positioned, while her mother’s eyes silently pleaded with her.
And then her father dropped to his knees.
One of the SS men stepped forward, taking hold of her father’s chin. She didn’t have to move closer to see the tightness of his hold, the cruelty of his grip.
‘Tell me where they’re hiding or I’ll shoot you,’ he said. ‘We know you’re helping them.’
Her father closed his eyes, and she wanted to scream at him to fight, to tell him to look that bastard Nazi in the eyes and refuse to yield.
The SS man spat in her father’s face before screaming: ‘Tell me where they are!’
They don’t know about Harry. This was something else, this was to do with her father’s work, it had to be. They think my father’s hiding Jews.
‘I know nothing. Nothing!’ he cried, as the grip on his chin appeared to tighten.
‘Tell me!’ the man screamed.
Everything from that moment on felt as if it were happening in slow motion.
Aletta glanced at the wall. She didn’t even think as she looked up, her eyes flitting over to the space that hid Harry, and by the time she realised her mistake, it was too late.
She hadn’t realised the other SS man had been watching her as his colleague screamed at her father, but she did see the satisfied snarl cross his lips when she looked over at him, the flash of his eyes that told her she’d made a terrible mistake.
Because just like that, she’d given Harry away.
He said something in German to the other man, and there was a laugh, a moment of silence as if in slow motion as Aletta’s horrified gaze met the pleading, terrified eyes of her mother. As the reality of what she’d done sunk in.
And then there was the sickening sound of the pistol firing, of the moment the bullet pierced her father’s head.
There was the sound of screaming that she didn’t even realise had come from her own mouth as she watched her mother fall, her pale-yellow dress spattered with spots of red, her arms catching her husband as he tipped over, slumping on the carpet.
Aletta was still screaming when the SS man turned around and the butt of his gun smacked against the side of her head, causing her to fall.
The room spun, and she could no longer hear screaming, but now everything was spinning, bright colours a kaleidoscope around her as she tried to crawl on all fours and failed.
She was powerless to do anything as one of the men used a baton to smash at the wall, the space that she’d given away by glancing at it.
She watched as they kicked their way through, her heart breaking as Harry charged them, armed only with a lamp, as he tried to wind the flex around the throat of one of the men and failed.
He collapsed to the floor, so close yet so far away, trying so hard to save himself as one of them stomped on his stomach and the other kicked his legs.
Her mother scuttled across the carpet to her then, holding her tight, as orders were screamed at them and Aletta was hauled to her feet, still dizzy.
‘Harry!’ she cried. ‘Harry!’
She heard him call back to her as she was hauled, half dragged down the stairs, her mother holding her hand in a vice-like grip that not even the SS man had been able to break.
But the worst part was listening for a second gunshot; seeing her father slumped on the floor in her mind, imagining the same fate coming for Harry as she cried out for him once more, forced away from him.
‘Harry,’ she whispered, blinking through her tears, twisting around to look back at the apartment to see if he was coming too.
But Harry never appeared, and when she shut her eyes, all she could see was her father. Her handsome, kind father, dead. Lifeless and discarded on the floor.