Page 20 of The Girl with a Secret
Rosa glanced over at Sophie’s parents, who were across the hall, Josef looking pale and haggard, Margarete gripping little Heinrich’s hand tightly. So, Sophie’s family would be going to Belgium, she thought. She wondered if she would ever see them again, and thought she probably wouldn’t. After Sophie’s departure, the family had kept to themselves, save for when Hannah had been willing to help out with Heinrich.
After Troper had finished the Belgium list, he started on the Netherlands. “Blau, Franz. Blau, Rachel…”
Rachel let out a little cry of what Rosa hoped was happiness as she put her arms around her husband. “You see?” she told him, her face suffused with tenderness. “We shall be safe. Safe in the Netherlands.”
Hannah and Lotte were not on the Netherlands list. “I suppose it must be France, then,” she said, when it seemed Troper was not going to read out any other names. “By the process of elimination.”
“You did say you wanted to see the Eiffel Tower,” Rosa reminded her. “You will save us a table at Henri’s!”
“Yes, you must, Hannah.” Rachel came to slip an arm around her friend. “How strange, we’re all going to different places. Even if Sophie hadn’t left when she had, she’d be going toBelgium now. Each of us flung to the far corners of the world, or at least of Europe.”
“But we will see each other again,” Rosa reminded them, her tone turning strident. She felt a sudden, wild desperation that they keep in touch, as they’d promised. She’d been skeptical and slightly disparaging when Sophie had suggested such a thing, but now she felt it keenly. These were her friends, her dear friends… and the only ones she had.
“Of course we will,” Rachel replied, smiling.
“But how?” The realization of what was happening thudded through Rosa. “None of us has an address yet, and we can’t send a cable the way Sophie could.” She stared at the other two women, distraught. “How on earth will we write to each other?”
Rachel’s cheerful demeanor faltered, replaced by a dawning uncertainty. She clearly hadn’t considered this, just as Rosa hadn’t. “We’ll find a way…” she insisted, a waver to her voice.
“I know,” Hannah said suddenly. “You can write to me at Henri’s! I’ll ask for them to hold my letters.”
“Henri’s…” Rosa let out a trembling laugh. “Will you even be in Paris?”
Hannah shrugged. “If I’m not, I’ll find a way to get there. And if you can’t write to Henri’s, then write to Sophie. She can write us back, with all our addresses.”
“But that will take ages,” Rosa protested. For a letter to be sent to America and back again might take months.
“Well, Henri’s, then,” Hannah replied. “We’ll find a way. This isn’t goodbye. We won’t let it be.”
“At least, not forever,” Rosa replied, trying to smile. She slipped her hand into her pocket and took out her shard of emerald, holding it up.
With a grin, Rachel took hers out of her pocket, as did Hannah. They’d all been walking around with them, Rosa thought, and the knowledge heartened her.
“To the Emerald Sisters,” she said, repeating the toast Hannah had made just a few weeks ago, when they’d been all four together—her, Hannah, Rachel, and Sophie. Now, poignantly, it was only three.
“And to when we meet again,” Rachel added.
They held their shards up, giving each other tremulous smiles. Rosa heard ringing assurance in her friends’ voices, but she saw fear and uncertainty lurking in their eyes. As they remained there with their hands upraised, smiles in place, the sun slipped from between the clouds, and its light touched the emeralds, making them, for a brief moment, brightly gleam, before the clouds came over it again, and the sky darkened.
CHAPTER 9
JULY 1939—LONDON
“This is unacceptable.”
Rosa avoided the eye of the woman from the Central British Fund for German Jewry who stood in the doorway, on the top floor of a dilapidated rowhouse in Belsize Park, northwest London that had been turned into flats. Even when she wasn’t looking at the woman in her sensible blouse, skirt, and lace-up shoes, Rosa could sense her irritation. Her father’s response to their new home was neither expected nor wanted. In the two weeks since they’d landed in England, Rosa had learned just how grateful they were expected to be, for being there at all.
And theywere, she reminded herself now, firmly.
“The Fund has worked hard to procure suitable accommodation,” the woman told her father, her tone rather stern. They were speaking in German, although the woman had greeted them off the train at Waterloo Station in English. But none of Rosa’s family’s English was good enough yet to have an actual, prolonged conversation, something they’d all quickly realized.
They’d been in Southampton since they’d disembarked from theRhakotis, which had taken them from Antwerp, staying at a cramped boarding house, waiting to find out where they wouldbe sent. Rosa, having already said goodbye to both Rachel and Hannah, had felt very alone as she’d gazed out at the strange city, her sliver of emerald clutched in her hand. Everything had looked so gray—the buildings, the sea, the sky. Admittedly, it was a cloudy day, and chilly for late June, but Rosa hadn’t been terribly impressed by her first view of her new country. Neither had her mother, who had muttered something about preferring Paris, or her father, who had spent the restless weeks holed up in a shabby boarding house that smelled of boiled cabbage and drains trying to find someone important to impress. There hadn’t been anyone, not anyone at all.
“Do you know where I lived in Berlin?” her father demanded of the woman, and Rosa made a choking sound.As if that mattered now…
“The rooms are a lovely size,” she interjected, her tone firm. “And the view of the park is lovely.” She could just see a scrap of green, beyond the farthest rooftops, if she stood on her tiptoes. She turned to the woman with an expectant smile. “What is it called?”
The woman thawed only slightly. “That is Hampstead Heath.”
