Page 28 of Villa of Secrets

He put his arms around my shoulders and squeezed. ‘Nobody knows for sure. It’s all speculation, Dora.’

‘Why are they treating us badly, all of a sudden? And what’s a death camp?’

His face paled. ‘An awful nickname for the German work camps.’

We sat next to each other, silent with our thoughts.

After a while he said quietly, ‘All we have is hope, Pandora. Pray that the war ends soon, for all our sakes.’ He took my hand. ‘Meanwhile, I’ve a new riddle for you.’

Overwhelmed by sadness I replied, ‘Go on then.’

‘What falls into the sea every day, but never gets wet?’ He turned and although he smiled, his eyes remained dull. ‘A bag of caramels when you tell me the answer.’

Unable to come up with anything, I said, ‘I’ll get it, don’t you worry, Danial.’

We shared out the last of our food while Rabbi Asher quoted the Torah.

Chapter 13

Bromley, London.

Exactly one week later, a second package arrived from Greece. Rebecca tried to explain to the postman that the first parcel was not for her, but he replied that he was new and would she hold on to it for a few days until the regular postman came back? He pointed out it did have her name on it, and it couldn’t be particularly important as it hadn’t been sent by registered mail, and there was no return address.

She opened the package to see if an invoice with a contact number lay inside, but it didn’t. This parcel was a mismatch of smaller parts including a largish spring. Mystified, she placed it alongside the other, in the dresser drawer. Perhaps someone would discover where their mail had gone and come knocking on her door. More important things weighed on her mind.

The local mechanic knew nothing about the packages. She checked they still held her phone number on file, in case anything turned up.

The Greek stamps brought Bubba and Naomi and the island of Rhodes into her thoughts. She frowned; what if they had something to do with it? But that didn’t make sense, not after almost ten years of silence.

She missed them both, yet the resentment of a decade ago still hurt. She remembered the terrible fight that had caused her to leave. They’d forced her to choose: them or Fritz. An unfair position to put her in. She chose Fritz and although she never regretted the decision, her heart still ached when she thought of her family.

Somewhere across town, a vintage-car enthusiast was probably frantic after ordering hand-tooled parts for his precious vehicle, and for some reason they were misdirected to Rebecca. But how her name came to be on the packet was a mystery. She ticked off all the things she had bought on eBay, but nothing made sense.

In the conservatory, she photographed a bunch of tulips for a greeting card company, losing herself in her work. The light was perfect, but she needed a fresh angle. She set the camera on her heaviest tripod, gripped the lever and turned it, locking the gears. Suddenly, she realised the parcel was more likely to be part of a robust professional tripod. There were many different kinds, with levers and gismos. Later she would call the online store where she bought her photography equipment and see if they knew anything about it.

*

The following Friday, when another package arrived, she was strangely pleased to see it. A puzzle to take her mind away from her womb and what might be living or dying inside her.

She placed the third parcel on the lounge coffee table, and then brought the first two packets and put the contents side by side, before unwrapping the latest arrival, her logic being that if she saw the parts together there was a chance she would recognise something.

The moment she laid eyes on the contents, she realised her mistake.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This piece was without doubt a pistol grip and trigger. A gun, she thought, suddenly recognising the first part as the barrel. A bloody gun! The first real gun she had ever seen in her life. Who the hell would send her a gun, and why?

She nudged the parts into position on the solid oak coffee table. The barrel, the bits and pieces of a firing mechanism, and the grip and trigger. A bloody gun! She peered at the fancy initials embossed into the metal above the grip, F N. Who was F N? Fritz Neumanner? Who’d sent a gun bearing her husband’s initials to her home?

Perhaps the pistol belonged to Fritz. A shiver ran through her. But the stamps were Greek and Fritz knew nothing about the first parcel. Could Bubba have been right all along? The thought was shocking. Bubba always maintained that Fritz Neumanner was the grandson of Frick Nüller. The war criminal responsible for indefensible crimes against humanity. The man who organised the displacement of the Jews of Rhodes to Auschwitz, the concentration camp. Frick Nüller, judged, convicted and sentenced to death in his absence. But this was pure fabrication on Bubba’s part. The old lady believes every blue-eyed blond was a Nazi, and she has no right to dump her hatred of an entire race on the man Rebecca loved.

Tears pricked her eyes. This was just the sort of quiet way Bubba would use to prove her point. Rebecca missed her grandmother and her sister terribly. Two people she treasured most dearly, but if they refused to accept the man she had married, she had no choice but to break away from them.

This gun turning up from Greece, with her husband’s initials on the side, meant what? Rebecca recalled the letter she received from Rhodes after leaving to live in London with Fritz. She hadn’t opened it, still broken-hearted that Bubba had forced her to make a choice: her family, or Fritz.

She left the pistol on the table and went into the kitchen to think.

*