Page 45 of Love in the Shadows

“I’ll be fine,” Fabienne said, though she didn’t feel at all fine.

Johanna started towards the front door.

“There is a spare set of keys to your house on the rack there.” Fabienne pointed to the wall to the right of the door. “I imagine all the doors will be locked.”

Johanna held her gaze.

“And who do you trust, Johanna?” Fabienne leaned back in the couch.

“I don’t know. I’m still working that out.” Johanna smiled wearily.

Fabienne didn’t look up as she said what she needed to say. “The train was carrying hundreds of Jews to the work camps: women, children, babies. No one is coming back from the camps, Johanna. There are rumours coming from Radio Londres about what is happening to these prisoners. It is worse than evil. I tried to bury a dead infant this evening, but the ground was too hard. Jacob was his name. His mother was pregnant. He had been dead long before we…”

She held up her trembling hands and stared at her cut-and-swollen fingers. “I left him in the root of a tree.” She looked up and held Johanna’s gaze. “I don’t know if his mother or if any of them will make it to safety, but we had to try and do something.”

Johanna looked away, rubbed her eyes, took the keys, and slipped out the front door.

Fabienne leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Tears found their way effortlessly onto her cheeks.

19.

GERHARD BURST THROUGH THE front door and into the dining room like wildfire through deadwood. He threw his hat on the sideboard and a newspaper onto the table, his eyes wide with rage. “Where’s Müller?”

“I sent him to bed today. He has a fever. I thought it best he stayed away from us.” Johanna refrained from saying how much more pleasant it was without him.

He took his seat at the head of the table and drank wine while reading the paper. She put a plate of food in front of him and set hers at the other end of the table. He ate hungrily, giving her no attention. She picked at her dinner, having no appetite. She would rather the Frenchwomen had something to take home than she would eat anything in his company.

Her stomach burned from the constant battle between her own anger and suppressed fear. In Müller’s absence, she had been able to breathe a little, but she hadn’t been able to talk to Frau Tussaud about Fabienne’s condition in case she didn’t know of Johanna’s involvement. Not knowing how Fabienne was recovering was like having an itch she desperately needed to scratch but couldn’t. It was driving her insane and she blamed him. She couldn’t look at him without loathing the sight of his uniform or the unresponsiveness in his eyes, and yet she couldn’t just get up from the table and walk out of the room.

Next to Fabienne, she’d felt inadequate and yet optimistic. Next to her husband, she felt a fraud and a criminal. She had heard the rumours about atrocities being carried out by some German soldiers at the work camps when she was in Berlin, and Fabienne had hinted at the same. She was sure some of her old friends were aware of the gossip too, but they would never discuss anything that wasn’t fed to them by the newspapers. She was guilty by association.

“How was your day?” she asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer, and took a sip of her wine.

He kept his eyes fixed on the newspaper. “I would prefer to spare you the details.”

She leaned back in the seat and turned the stem of the glass between her fingers, staring in his direction. “Because you don’t trust me, Gerhard?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The wives in Berlin knew what was going on with their husband’s work. Frau Bauer talks to her husband. It’s just you, Gerhard. You need to keep secrets from me. Why?”

There was a knock on the front door, and Gerhard slammed the paper on the table as if the interruption had massively inconvenienced him, when it was her provoking him that he didn’t like.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

She returned with a telegram and handed it to him.

He pulled open the note, read it quickly, and slipped it into the pocket inside his jacket. His expression didn’t register whether the news was good or bad, and his dismissal of it meant he had no intention of sharing anything with her.

“I’ll send someone to guard the house until Müller is better.” He continued reading old news.

“There’s no need, Gerhard. Honestly.”

He glared at her over the top of the paper. “Since you asked, let me tell you what’s going on around you. Five German soldiers were killed three nights ago, Johanna. They were guards on a train. They were not shooting at anyone; they were simply doing their duty as soldiers escorting prisoners to Germany. And they were killed because of it.”

She pushed her plate to one side, her meal barely touched. “And the prisoners they were guarding, what did they do wrong?” She knew the question would enflame his anger. She was pushing to the point that her loyalty to the Reich, and to him, would be questioned.

A shiver snaked down her spine at the wild look in his eyes.