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‘Calm down, Minki. Your daughter will be quite safe,’ replied Goebbels calmly. ‘Clara is going to an institution which will care for her. These are the new rules. This is how it will be from now on. I explained to Max that there can be no exceptions. Just because you are my friends does not give you special rights. Anyone over the age of ten, with a disability, must be dealt with – that is the law.’
‘But she’s not ten!’ Minki shouted. ‘She won’t be ten till January. Max, tell him – they’ve made a mistake.’
‘A couple of months here or there…it makes no difference,’ replied Goebbels firmly. ‘Max, I’ll leave you to deal with your wife, but well done on the new film. Oh, by the way, I hearI Accusehas been very well received. It’s being distributed all over the country, and even abroad. I sincerely believe it will turn the tide of public opinion.’ He shook Max’s hand. ‘I’ll see myself out, and perhaps we can continue this viewing later.’
Alone with Max, Minki hurled herself at him, beating his chest with her fists. ‘Why, why…you bastard, why?’
‘I had to,’ he said quietly, as the blows rained down on him. ‘Joseph made it clear that Clara had to go, or our lives would be made intolerable. “We must all make sacrifices,” he told me. Goebbels is lashing out. Hitler has banned him from seeing that actress – Lída Baarová. Apparently, Hitler threatened to deport her. The last I heard, she had escaped in the middle of the night and has gone back to Prague. Goebbels is heartbroken.’
‘I don’t care about Baarová, or Joseph and his broken heart,’ said Minki, sinking down onto one of the red velvet cinema seats. ‘He still has all of his children.’
Max sat down next to her and reached out for her hand, but she snatched it away. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Minki, I’m so sorry.’ He sighed. ‘Take the boys to your father. You’re right, they’ll be safer there, and while you’re away I’ll do all I can to find out where Clara is. I was promised she would be sent to a children’s home where she would have friends and be looked after. But, if you’re so unhappy, perhaps we can persuade them to let us have her back?’
Minki looked at him, her eyes filled with hate. ‘If you believe that, you’re a bigger fool than I thought. We won’t get her back unless we fight for her.’
She stood up to leave the viewing room, but turned at the door. ‘I told you once that if Clara came to any harm I would never forgive you, Max, and I meant it. If anything happens to her, I will do everything I can to destroy you.’
Max didn’t return home that night – through either shame or fear, Minki presumed. Lying alone in her bed, she kept reliving those last moments when Clara was forced onto the bus. The memory of her daughter screaming in terror was torture. Where had they taken her? Clara had never been away from home before and would be terrified, wretched and hungry.
She must try to stay calm, Minki told herself. As soon as the boys were settled with her father, she would begin the process of finding Clara. For if she was sure of one thing it was that Max would never be able to get their daughter back. Only she had the determination and guile for the task.
At first light, she woke the boys. ‘Get dressed quickly, and wait for me in the hall.’
She went to Ida’s room and shook her awake. ‘Pack your things and get out of my house now. And don’t come back.’
Downstairs, Minki rang for a taxi. As soon as it arrived, she bundled the youngsters inside together with the luggage.
‘The main railway station, please driver,’ she said, wrapping her arms around the boys.
The taxi crunched away down the gravel drive and headed out into the road, but Minki didn’t once look back. Her marriage to Max was over. All that mattered now was Clara’s survival.
32
LONDON
September 1941
Leila walked home from the bus stop one evening, admiring the autumnal shades of trees on the Heath. Turning in to the cottage’s front garden, she noted the wasps humming angrily around the rotting apples littering the lawn.
Letting herself into the hall, Leila noticed a letter written in a familiar hand, with a Munich postmark, which had been left on the hall table. She had the familiar sense of relief and anxiety that always accompanied her mother’s letters. Rather than opening it immediately, she went first to the kitchen to check on the children. Sofia was sitting at the table doing her homework.
Leila kissed the top of her head. ‘Hello darling…Good day at school?’
‘Yes, it was all right. Oh, and did you notice you had a letter from Grandma today. I put it on the table in the hall.’
‘Yes, thank you.I’ll read it later. I wanted to get dinner ready first. By the way, there are lots of fallen apples outside – could you and Axel pick them up? If you choose the ones that aren’t bruised and wrap them in old newspaper, we should be able to store them in the shed for a few weeks. Where is Axel, by the way?’
‘He’s in the shed, “making something”, he said.’
As Leila approached the old hut at the bottom of the garden, she could hear laughter. Axel had installed a radio in his workshop so he could listen to Home Service comedy programmes, and had improved its reception by trailing a long copper wire aerial from the window and attaching it to the washing line. As Leila approached the door of the shed, she realised it was notITMAthat Axel was listening to, but the nasal intonation of someone else entirely. It sounded alarmingly like the German propagandist William Joyce, popularly known as Lord Haw-Haw.
Leila abruptly opened the shed door, startling Axel, who instantly switched off the radio.
‘Axel, what are you doing? You shouldn’t be listening to that awful man and his lies.’
‘I only listen because I think he’s funny.’
