‘What?’ Persey said, a sense of cold descending on the otherwise warm evening. She climbed off her bicycle, unable to steady herself.
The doctor nodded. ‘Awful. In a way, we knew this day would come. Part of me wonders what took them so long.’
Persey was propelled into speechlessness and she rubbed her hand over her mouth until she eventually asked, ‘When?’
‘A few months ago. I only found out recently. I didn’t know whether to tell Lise or not. Didn’t want to worry her. But when she started on about wanting to leave the house, I just had to tell her, to illustrate how very real the threat was if she was discovered.’
Persey nodded, a cold finger of fear running up the length of her spine. Jews were being forced from the island. Good God. ‘How did she take it?’
‘As well as could be expected. There were tears. But then she said she was grateful you and I had stepped in to help when we did and, well, we haven’t spoken about it since. I daren’t open the subject back up again.’
‘There’ll be more, you know,’ Persey offered, echoing the words of Lise’s landlady Mrs Renouf from so long ago.
‘Yes, I believe there will. They’ll take the ones that are out in the open. Then they’ll find the ones in hiding. Somehow.’
They were silent for a moment, each contemplating the horror, each wondering how long it would be before they began hunting for Lise. All paperwork on the island must point to the fact that Lise never left.
‘How’s Jack getting along?’ he asked, changing the subject.
‘Not well at all. Feels useless. Hates himself.’
‘What’s he doing for work these days?’
‘Taken a job in a camera shop. You were very good to amend his medical records, you know. I’m sure you’ve saved him.’
‘It was a clever idea of yours.’
‘Not my idea, not really. Discrepancies were pointed out to me by … a friend.’
‘A friend you can trust, I hope,’ Doctor Durand said, looking concerned.
She thought of how long it had been since she’d last seen Stefan. The strange way it had all ended between them. Again. ‘Yes, I think so,’ Persey said, hoping wherever Stefan was that he was safe. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ll give some thought to what I asked?’ He continued, ‘About the newspaper?’
‘Yes,’ she said with absolute certainty; anything that helped the people of Guernsey and went directly against the orders of the Third Reich. ‘Of course I’ll help.’
Persey cycled through the lanes, allowing the fresh summer breeze to whip her hair, her Victory rolls bouncing loosely. Ironic, because there was nothing to feel victorious about today. The edges of her cardigan flapped behind her as she picked up speed. With hardly any cars on the road now, all commandeered for use by the occupying force, there was very little chance of crashing into anyone, and now she remembered she had to cycle on the other side of the road to keep with German rules.
And so she pushed the pedals harder and harder, racing through the uneven lanes, becoming breathless as stones chipped around her. She was sure she was becoming more and more unfit as the Occupation wore on. She was getting thinner, certainly. Rations had been lessening and the desire to exercise had, sadly, dwindled. Puddings were almost a thing of the past. The carrageen moss Mrs Grant had been using to make blancmange was losing its novelty value, and she’d much rather do without. If the kitchen garden did get ransacked by the newly imported workers, then they were going to struggle, but what could she do? Stand guard? Those poor men needed the food more than the household at Deux Tourelles did. She’d seen them: filthy, thin, prodded andpushed at every opportunity by guards. Jack heard soldiers in the camera shop boasting Poles and Russians were among the slaves.
‘And we know how Herr Hitler feels about the Russians, don’t we?’ he’d said with a shudder. ‘Think he hates them more than he hates British spies.’
In truth, Persey had no true idea how Hitler felt about the Russians, but it had soon become clear as she’d witnessed them herself.
She had passed their camp near Rue Sauvage one day when delivering documents from work to a customer – the field surrounded with barbed wire. The sight of the huts and the men had shocked her so much she had paused and before she’d known it, she’d been accidentally gawping at the men in rags that could hardly be called clothes, scruffily lined up, forced to march toward the beginnings of the concrete bunkers now littering the island. They had marched past her, their eyes barely bothering to look into hers. Perhaps they hadn’t had the energy to lift their gaze. How would they lift their limbs and tools to forge on with the fortifications they were being forced to build?
What had these men been doing before being imprisoned? They must have had families, lives, homes, jobs, and now their existence was rudimentary, savage as they’d been scooped up by Hitler’s war machine, removed from their lives, brought here to build walls, bunkers, continue a madman’s aggression. Now they lived a life of starvation, and beatings from the Organisation Todt guards, who Persey thought looked as if they were enjoying themselves far too much, making free with their fists on poor men who looked to have done nothing wrong and clearly giving them next to no food. There were hundreds here and she was sure there would be hundreds more.
Perhaps she should leave a discreet bundle of food at the entrance to the drive when she could. She was still wondering if that would encourage foraging in their garden or discourage it as she rounded the lane into the driveway at such a pace that herwheels screeched when she pulled on her brakes. Parked in front of the house was a German military vehicle. Persey gasped. Standing at the open front door was a man in German uniform. Her first thought was that it was Stefan, returned after all this time. She was seeing him everywhere, just for split seconds, before she realised it was not him. This man was in the standard uniform of a foot soldier and his rounded helmet gave him away as such.
He turned and gave her a hard stare. It was the man who had chased them through the woodland all those months ago. The man she had seen in Candie Gardens, who looked as if he’d recognised her, but not quite placed where he’d seen her. His eyes widened in amazement and then something resembling a slow smile spread over his face when it became clear he did. She was here, at the house where he had chased her. She had watched him from the window as he’d emphatically gesticulated to Stefan that he’d seen her out after curfew. She had seen him then and he had been adamant he had seen her.
She held his gaze. ‘Hello,’ she said more confidently than she felt as she dismounted her cycle. ‘Can I help you?’ Oh God, the radio. Had they all been listening to it while she’d been out? Had they put it away in its special hiding place? Were the Germans raiding them? Had they heard the distinctive tones of the news being broadcast from inside the house? The chime of Big Ben? Her mind tumbled and whirled with panic and she felt her fingers shake. She gripped the handlebars tighter to prevent her hands from visibly trembling.
‘No, you cannot help me,’ the man said in stilted English. ‘I have achieved everything that I came for.’
‘And what is that?’ Persey asked, hating his clipped tone, wondering if what he had come for was indeed confirmation it was she who lived there.
