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‘He just told you not to come home?’
Lili nodded.
‘Well, he’s an idiot too.’
Lili managed a smile. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I must go. A taxi is turning up any minute to take me to The Summerhouse to collect Maisie.’
Lili was not looking forward to telling Nate that things weren’t all that they seemed. She felt like just skipping town without saying goodbye. It was the thought of seeing his face when she told him that troubled her.
‘He’s appeared happier this past week,’ mused Sarah, thinking about her son. ‘At first, I put that down to things going okay at work, to him starting to settle in and find his feet in the local community. Now, I see that those things are not the whole truth of the matter.’ Sarah stared at Lili. ‘You are the common denominator. You and Maisie.’
Lili shifted from one foot to the other. ‘But we are not staying.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘How so?’
Before Lili could answer, Sarah continued, ‘If it’s about the flat, don’t worry – I’m sure Joseph will want you to stay as long as you like. And there’s the job here too – god knows he could do with help running his shop.’
Sarah glanced back into the room. ‘Besides, you can’t leave now. You must hang around long enough for my father to get well.’ She held up the band. ‘We need to find out about this.’
Lili stared at it. Going there to see Joseph’s ring had created more mysteries than it had solved. Why did she have the matching Hebrew wedding ring, and who were these people he talked of, Otto, Alena, and Miriam? Why did his own daughter have no knowledge of them?
Although she wanted Joseph to recover from his fall, she was nervous about what she would discover. Was she related to him, to Sarah? And if she was … Lili didn’t want to think about the good-looking doctor with the terrible bedside manner, the young man she couldn’t get out of her mind. Might he be a relation?
‘Lili?’
‘I must go. My taxi …’
‘Of course.’
Lili had a question before she left. The way Joseph had spoken about someone called Miriam, the way he had cried … she knew she might be mistaken, but it had reminded Lili of the way a small child, younger than Maisie, would cry. ‘Sarah, how old would Joseph have been during the war?’ It was an odd question, but Lili was interested to know.
‘He was born in the mid-thirties. Why do you ask?’
‘What happened to him, to his parents, your grandparents, in the war – do you know?’
‘A little. It’s not something he talks much about.’
Lili nodded.
While Joseph was eating his dinner, Lili and Sarah took a seat outside in a small waiting area. ‘My grandparents were artists,’ Sarah explained. ‘They enjoyed travelling and would visit their artist friends abroad. They made the mistake of travelling to the Ionian Islands on the eve of the outbreak of war. Although it meant they escaped The Blitz, they were on Corfu during the Italian occupation. Then the Nazi invasion followed. I believe they andtheir friends made several attempts to escape the island by boat. Eventually, they were rounded up with the rest of the Jews, but my father and grandfather escaped.’ Sarah paused. ‘Joseph never went into detail about how they escaped or what happened to my grandmother, although I suspect she ended up in one of the, you know …’ Sarah trailed off.
Concentration camps.Lili nodded solemnly. Sarah did not have to say it.
‘As for my grandfather, he would never speak of it. After the war, they returned to England. The house they rented in London had been reduced to rubble in The Blitz,and their friends and family had perished. My father and grandfather had nobody left but each other, and nothing left but the old summerhouse my family owned where they used to spend the summers before the war. So, they returned to the abandoned summerhouse.’
Lili’s mobile phone rang. ‘Shit. I forgot to turn it off when I got on the ward.’ Lili was about to ignore the call when she saw it was Hannah. ‘I’m sorry, I have to take this.’
Lili stood up. ‘Look, can I catch up with you about this? My taxi is waiting, and I have to pick up Maisie.’
Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, I’d like that. I get the feeling you have some connection to the island of Corfu?’
Lili nodded. She watched Sarah heading back to the ward as she answered her phone. ‘Hi Hannah, how was your—’ Lili was about to sayflightwhen Hannah shouted, ‘Where the hell are you?’
Lili held the phone away from her ear for a moment. ‘Hannah, what’s the matter?’
