Chapter Thirty-Four Aletta
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aletta
‘Aletta, we have to get back to the camp.’
She heard her mother’s words, but couldn’t bring herself to rise. Her fingers grasped the front of Chloe’s shirt as her tears continued to fall.
‘Aletta.’ Her mother’s voice was more forceful now and Aletta felt herself being pulled backwards.
Aletta stared down at Chloe, barely breathing, her eyes burning from the tears she’d shed and the ones that kept appearing. Chloe can’t be gone. She can’t be.
‘I can’t leave her here,’ Aletta whispered.
She found it impossible to believe that her friend was gone.
Her blood-stained shirt was all the reminder she needed, but she’d slipped away so quickly.
After everything they’d been through, after everything that they’d survived, it didn’t seem fair or just to die at the final hurdle.
Although nothing about the last few years had been just or fair.
‘We need to go and ask for help,’ her mother said, her hand rubbing circles on Aletta’s back. ‘We need to—’
‘How can you just leave her here?’ Aletta cried. ‘We can’t go!’
‘Chloe was like a daughter to me,’ her mother said, and when Aletta looked up, she saw her mother’s tear-stained face and the pain in her eyes, saw the tremble of her hands as she wiped her cheeks.
‘But you’re my daughter too, and we need to get out of here before we’re shot at again.
If they come back, we need to be somewhere safe, or Chloe’s bravery will be for nothing. ’
Aletta nodded then, knowing she needed to move. ‘We’ll find someone to move her body?’ she asked, swallowing and trying to tell herself that Chloe would have wanted them to be safe, that she would forgive them for leaving her. ‘We’ll come back for her?’
‘We will.’ Her mother held out her hand, but as she was reaching for it, Aletta saw her frown. ‘Where are her papers?’
Chloe’s records. Of course they needed to find them. Aletta had made her a promise that she would make sure the records were shared, and if her mother hadn’t mentioned it, she would have forgotten all about them in her grief.
‘They might be back at the campsite where we were sitting, but . . .’ Aletta felt sick as she reached into the oversized jacket Chloe was wearing, one they’d been given by the Red Cross when they arrived at the site. Bile rose in her throat, hot and acidic.
I’ve found them.
Aletta took out the crudely bound papers, her heart settling as she realised they could at least do this for Chloe.
‘I have them,’ she said, hating that she’d smudged the papers with blood. But it was Chloe’s blood, and they were Chloe’s words, and somehow it seemed almost fitting.
‘We’ll find the right people to give them to,’ her mother said, her voice husky. ‘We’ll do that for her, Aletta, I promise you. And we’ll find the poems she spoke of, the poems she wished could be published. We’ll find her family and we’ll do everything we can.’
‘We’ll make sure no one forgets,’ Aletta sobbed, reaching for her mother, the papers tucked tight to her chest, her other hand going around her mother’s waist as much for comfort as to stop her from falling.
Even as guilt rushed through Aletta, she knew that the only way she could thank Chloe was by fulfilling the promise she’d made.
Someone was running towards them. A well-dressed man with kind eyes who looked straight past them to Chloe.
Her breath caught as she looked back herself, wishing she hadn’t when she saw her friend’s crumpled body on the ground.
But the man put himself between Aletta and her mother, letting them lean on him as he helped them to walk away, and she noticed that he didn’t look like any of the other volunteers.
‘Why were they firing at us?’ she heard her mother ask, her voice verging on hysterical. ‘Who were they? Why are they shooting!’
‘They thought we were Germans,’ he said, and she heard the anger and frustration in the man’s voice. ‘They were our own.’
‘You’d think RAF pilots would be trained to see the cross on our buses!’ her mother said through thick tears. ‘Can they not see the red cross? Do they not understand what it means?’
Our own men shot Chloe down. Aletta might have laughed if they’d come away from the gunfire unscathed, but now, all she felt was rage. Pure, white, blinding rage. That after so long of praying for their own to come and save them, they’d ended up being the ones to kill Chloe.
‘Our own men?’ Aletta repeated. ‘Was it them who shot at the buses earlier, too?’
He nodded as they reached the tents again, his expression solemn.
‘I knew this rescue mission would be our most dangerous, I was warned, and for that I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘But Himmler . . .’ He shook his head, and Aletta tried to grasp what he’d been about to say.
‘They weren’t going to leave anyone there alive.
The other camps have all been liberated now, but Ravensbrück is one of the last and .
. .’ He paused. ‘Nazis have been painting red crosses on trucks to try to escape to other areas, and I think our pilots are so determined to shoot down every last one of them. I’m so sorry, truly I am. ’
Aletta nodded, wiping away fresh tears. She didn’t need to hear any more. She knew they had to be grateful, but still, it hurt more than anything to know their own had been the ones to shoot at them.
‘If those buses hadn’t arrived today, if . . .’ She couldn’t even continue, her heart aching for Chloe. She fought the urge to look back at her.
‘I don’t think you would have been alive by the end of the week,’ he said, gently. ‘You were the last group to be saved. We can’t go back again.’
‘Thank you,’ her mother said, and Aletta watched as she held out her hand.
He did the same, smiled and then gently touched her mother’s arm. She wouldn’t have blamed him for being repelled by their appearance, but he didn’t waver.
‘I’m sorry, for what’s happened to you both. My only hope is that tomorrow we can transport you to Sweden, where you’ll truly be safe.’ He smiled again. ‘The war is all but over, but I know that’s no consolation for those who perished today.’
He glanced at the papers she held to her chest, and Aletta found herself holding them even tighter as the weight of his words hit her. The war is over. All these years, all the suffering they’d endured, and it was almost over.
‘Are they important documents?’ he asked.
‘They are memories of the women we’ve been in the camp with,’ her mother said. ‘Our friend kept them at great risk to her life.’ She paused, and Aletta almost broke at the pain in her mother’s voice, at the way she sobbed out the last word. ‘Our friend who was killed.’
‘Then they’re very important documents indeed,’ he said, as if understanding their pain. ‘There will be authorities waiting to greet you on arrival in Sweden. Tell them that Folke Bernadotte wants the records you hold officially documented.’
Aletta watched, her body beginning to tremble as they stood and watched the man walk away, but she continued to clutch the list so tightly as if her life depended on it.
Chloe was the sister she’d never had.
She was the second daughter her mother had never had.
And now she was gone and there was nothing Aletta could do to bring her back.
We’ll make sure they never forget, Chloe. We’ll make sure that every recipe, every poem, every note is remembered, and never, ever forgotten. Even if it takes me a lifetime, I promise you that no one will forget.