Page 42 of The Girl with a Secret
“Where is he?” she asked instead. “He should report to the police station as soon as possible, to show he has nothing to hide.” Even if hedidhave something to hide… but maybe the police, the Aliens Department, already knew it? Was that why he had been summoned?
“I don’t know where he is,” her mother replied irritably. “At that wretchedcoffeehouse, no doubt.” She pressed her lips together, clearly not wanting to say anything more. There had been no more late nights, since that episode back in August, when her mother had pawned her emerald and her father had taken her out to supper, smelling of another woman’s perfume. “He’s usually back in time for supper.”
“Yes…” How long would the police be willing to wait? Rosa wondered. How urgent was this summons?
“Oh,” her mother said, her tone dismissive as she turned away. “There was a letter for you, as well.”
“A letter for me?” Rosa’s heart lifted with hope. She longed to hear from Sophie or Hannah or Rachel. She’d had so very little news.
“Yes, on the table.”
Rosa picked up the envelope; it had a London postmark and looked very similar to the one for her father, from the Aliens Department, a fact which made her throat dry, and her heart do an unpleasant little flip.Surely not…
She slit the envelope and pulled out the letter. With a sickening lurch of realization, she saw that it was exactly the same. Just like her father, Rosa had been commanded to the Rochester Row Police Station “forthwith upon receipt of this letter.”
CHAPTER 17
“Please follow me.”
Rosa was entirely numb, her terror too deep to truly feel, as she followed the officer at Rochester Row to a police van, known to Londoners as a Black Maria, waiting outside the station of Victorian brick. Behind her, her father continued to swagger and bluster, as if he had some say over their fate, some power.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “We were both classed Category C months ago?—”
“Please, silence,” the police officer escorting them cut across him, his tone severe. “It will all be explained to you at the appropriate time.”
Her father, still bristling, fell furiously silent.
It had only been an hour since Rosa had been back in their flat, reading the letter from the Aliens Department, but it had felt endless, as if days had passed and worlds had shifted in the space of sixty heart-rending minutes. She’d had to wait for her father to come home, her mind and heart both racing, while her mother had wrung her hands and moaned about what she would do, if both Rosa and her father were taken from her.
Rosa had been tempted to whirl around and snap at her mother what wasshesupposed to do, if she was interned heavenonly knew where, but she hadn’t wanted to put such a terrible prospect into words, make it more of a reality than it already was. Maybe it really was just a formality, she’d told herself, again and again.
Now, as she clambered into the back of the Black Maria, it felt far from a formality. The barred door clanged shut as her father scrambled in after her. They sat on rough wooden benches, opposite each other, as the van started.
“Are we being arrested?” Rosa asked after a moment, her voice sounding small. The back of the van smelled horribly stale, of urine and sweat, and she covered her nose with her hand.
“We are going to be questioned, I should think.” Her father narrowed his eyes as he glanced out the window, through the bars. “I imagine, with the imminent invasion of France and the Low Countries, they want to be especially careful, although I fully intend to complain about our treatment. We are respectable, working people?—”
Shewas a respectable, working person, Rosa thought rather sourly. Her father had not drawn a wage in the nearly a year since they’d arrived. But before she could put such a retort into words, the meaning of what he had said slammed into her. According to her father, an invasion of France wasn’t a mere possibility, butimminent. Inevitable.
“France…” Rosa whispered.Hannah. And Rachel and Franz in the Netherlands, as well. “Will it really come to that?” she asked, as if he could possibly know for certain. Sometimes, Rosa thought, she acted the way everyone else seemed to—as if her father had special knowledge or power, as if his charisma would bridge chasms. Sitting in the back of a rattling Black Maria, the irony was bitter.
“Don’t be a child, Rosa,” her father tutted. “Of course, it will.”
He sounded both certain and indifferent, and that stung more than his dismissive admonishment. She hated to think ofher friends being under Nazi rule once again. What would they do? How would they survive?
How would she?
“There’s no need,” her father continued after a moment, his tone turning diffident, “if they ask, to go into what our life in Berlin was like. That has no relevance here. Obviously.”
No need to talk about how they’d entertained Nazis in their home, he meant, Rosa thought scornfully. How they’d filed in, laughing, joking about the pills her father gave, how for a Jew he had the best schnapps. They’d been indulgent, with a razor-sharp edge of cruelty, and it had terrified Rosa, even as she’d done her best to keep her laughter light, the smile on her face, wondering when it would all start to go horribly wrong…
A sudden, overwhelming fury rose up in her in a howl. If her father hadn’t sold his soul to the Nazis… If he hadn’t cajoled her to help him host…They’re just men, Rosa, and they can help us, think of it that way… If he’d just kept his head down, been willing to lose his medical license, like just about every other Jew in Germany… They wouldn’t be here. They’d still be safely classed category C, under no suspicion,surely.
“The whole reason we’re here,” Rosa spat, “is because they must know all that already. They probably have a file onyouan inch thick, Father.”
Her father glared at her, his eyes narrowed. “Be quiet, Rosa,” he snapped, and then glanced meaningfully at the driver, separated by a wooden partition. Rosa doubted he could hear them over the rumble of the van, and, in any case, they were speaking German. “I don’t think we need to worry,” her father continued. “I should think it unlikely that they know anything.”
“And yet you were soimportant,” Rosa couldn’t keep from reminding him. She knew she was behaving in a petty and petulant way, but right then she couldn’t help it. She wasscared… and angry. They didn’t have to be here. If her father had chosen differently, back in Berlin, they wouldn’t have been.
