Page 75 of Love in the Shadows

Sister Jeanne glanced from one woman to the other with a deepening frown.

Fabienne gritted her teeth. She couldn’t create a scene or drag Johanna up the stairs in front of the children. She could help them through the tunnel and then come back home. “Fine. You bring the buckets.”

Johanna smiled and turned on her heel. “Fine.”

Sister Jeanne smiled sweetly at the children and then turned to Johanna and Fabienne. “It is my time to leave you.” She hugged them both. “I cannot thank you enough. May God be with you both, always.”

“Do you have enough food with you, Sister?” Johanna asked.

The sister patted her robe – a hidden pocket, no doubt. “Yes, I have plenty. Someone will be waiting for me at the other end. I will be back at the convent by the end of the day.”

She held the cross in her hand as she spoke. Fabienne wondered if what she’d said was really a prayer. “The children will achieve great things because of you.”

The sister nodded. “They will have an opportunity, because of all of us.” She kissed the children, left the cellar and started down the tunnel back towards the German border.

“Are you ready?” Fabienne said, glancing from one frightened child to another. “Come on, let’s go.”

The younger child stared at her vacantly. Her brother took her hand and encouraged her to move. Fabienne led the way, and Johanna followed behind the children.

As they reached the cottage, the youngest girl vomited.

Johanna knelt in front of her, studied her, and touched her forehead. “Are you feeling poorly?”

The girl nodded. Her cheeks were rosy and the area around her mouth was pale. Her skin was dry, burning hot.

Fabienne led them into the kitchen and gave them the bottle of doctored milk. The boy drank a third, then the eldest girl. The sick girl drank a little and started to retch. There was no way Fabienne could put her in the back of the van. “She will have to stay here until she’s well,” she said.

The boy put his arm around his sister. “If she’s staying, then we need to stay with her.”

The girl started crying.

They didn’t have room in the cottage to look after three children, let alone without identity documents.

Johanna clasped Fabienne’s arm. “She can travel in the front with me.”

“You are not coming in the van.” Fabienne shook her head.

Johanna glared at her, clearly disagreeing. “I’m going to church, and you are driving that way. I told my husband that you would drop me off.”

Fabienne widened her eyes. Johanna had already plotted this out, and the annoying thing was that she was in no position to discuss the increased threat in front of the children as it would only cause them to worry. “Okay.” She looked at the children. “Your sister will travel in the front with us. You must be silent in the back until I open the door. Understand?”

They nodded.

Fabienne got a blanket for the sick child and wrapped it around her. In the van, Johanna put her arm around the child who leaned into her side, shivering.

“We have to drop the children first, then I will go to the dairy.” It would make Fabienne early for Father Michel and late for her deliveries, but she could hardly drive to the dairy with a sick child in the front seat.

Johanna tugged the girl close and stroked her damp hair as Fabienne drove towards town. “Poor little one.”

They hadn’t travelled more than a kilometre when the flashlights appeared in the road ahead. Fabienne took a left turn off the main route, taking them further into the countryside. The road was bordered by hedgerows and ditches. “Damned patrols.”

After just over a kilometre, she took a right turn down a single-track lane, then another right. They hadn’t gone more than five hundred metres when there were more flashing lights on the road ahead. Only this time there was nowhere to turn. “Putain!”

Johanna reached out to Fabienne. She brushed her hand against Fabienne’s jacket pocket, the familiar shape and feel of the pistol beneath, and released a tight breath. “You won’t need that. I’ll talk to them,” she said.

Fabienne brought the van to a halt and wound down the window. Two officers approached them, one training his rifle at her head.

“Papers?”

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