‘Well then. Shall we?’
‘I can’t ride in that car with you,’ she retorted.
‘Why on earth not?’ Stefan asked. ‘I am going to your home. You are going to your home. Why not get in the car?’
‘Because …’
The policeman looked at her with undisguised disgust.
She thought of his words from only a few moments ago. She was no fancy piece and she didn’t want the driver to think she was. ‘I just can’t.’
‘Persey, I am too tired for this,’ he said pleadingly. ‘Get in the car.’ He climbed inside, the door still being held open by the policeman.
‘I …’ She looked around in panic.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the man. Persey walked around to the side not occupied by Stefan. The policeman made to walk round and open the door for her. She assumed he would be told off if he didn’t treat every passenger with respect, butshe shook her head. ‘You don’t have to open the door for me,’ she mumbled in embarrassment as she opened it and climbed in, the door slamming loudly after her.
‘You look thinner,’ Stefan said, looking at her as they drove away from the harbour and up through the lanes towards Deux Tourelles.
Persey nodded, wishing she wasn’t in the car. ‘Probably,’ she muttered. ‘We’ve got this funny little thing called rationing.’
‘You have been well?’ he asked. ‘Other than the funny little rationing?’
‘Yes, quite well, thank you,’ Persey said stiffly, wishing she didn’t want to smile at his comment.
He laughed and the noise startled her. It didn’t suit their surroundings. ‘You do not wish to talk to me,’ he said. ‘After all this time, you still do not want me near you?’
‘Mrs Grant has just been deported,’ Persey said suddenly. ‘Jack wasn’t there. He has no idea what’s just happened. I now have to break it to him. And I don’t know how.’
Stefan nodded. ‘I am sorry for it. For Mrs Grant. And for Jack. But it is really not the worst thing happening in this war at the moment. You must trust me on that.’
She shook her head, refusing to reply. She looked at the back of the policeman’s head as he drove. Every part of her burned with embarrassment.
‘Fine,’ Stefan said and went silent for the duration of the journey.
When they reached the house, they climbed out of the car, Persey mumbling a ‘thank you,’ to the bemused policeman.
Persey let them in to the house. Gone were the days when it was possible to leave the door unlocked. The looting, the ransacking of properties that were now empty, their occupants deported to Germany; and the foreign workers who had taken to breaking in, only for food, had forced the Islanders into keeping the doors and windows locked at all times, even when inside the house.
He walked into the sitting room without even asking her if he might, which he would once have done. Sitting down on the settee, he pulled out three bottles of French brandy from his kit bag, opened one, paused and then drank from it.
Persey didn’t know what to say. She sat, gingerly, next to him – keeping a suitable distance and watched his throat as he drank, and as he lowered the bottle she had to force herself to look away. She noticed his body language.
‘Why is your hand shaking?’ she whispered. What had he seen? What had happened?
He held the bottle in his lap, put his head back against the antimacassar of the settee and closed his eyes, ignoring her question. She looked at the bottles. ‘Where did you get these?’ she asked. Spirits in general were utterly unobtainable in the Channel Islands now.
‘From home.’
‘Home?’ she asked dumbly.
‘Yes. Berlin.’
‘Berlin?’ She wished she’d stop repeating everything he said. ‘You went home to Berlin? I thought you were in Alderney.’
His expression darkened. ‘I was there too. And then I went home.’
‘Really? How long for?’ she asked. Somehow, all this time, she’d pictured him in Alderney. It confused her that he had returned home to Berlin and she’d not known, but of course she wouldn’t have known. ‘You didn’t send any word.’
