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The matron nodded.
‘I’m sure you’d like to see the grave,’ said the doctor. ‘Matron, can you arrange for someone to accompany Frau vonZeller? Plot eighty-seven, I believe…’ He closed the ledger with a slam.
The man who had first brought Minki to the matron’s office was selected for the task. Still carrying Clara’s parcel of clothes, Minki followed him blindly down the corridor, past the barn and up the steps to the cemetery. Her whole being felt empty. It was the shock, she supposed. That, and grief – an unendurable grief.
Plot 87 was situated next to the wooden gate in the wall. Minki knelt next to the pile of earth, just beginning to grow weeds on its surface, and stroked the soil, desperate to feel her child beneath it. It seemed somehow strangely ironic – that her daughter’s grave was just a few feet away from open countryside…if only Clara could have found her way up these steps, perhaps she might have escaped.
‘I want her brought back home,’ Minki said to the man hovering next to her.
‘Of course.’ The man’s tone had changed since their first encounter. Now, he was sympathetic, almost gentle. ‘If you leave your address at reception, we’ll make the arrangements. I’ll leave you, shall I? I expect you’d like to be alone for a moment. And, I’m so sorry,’ he added.
As Minki knelt on the damp earth, she tried to come to terms with what had happened. Her child’s body was lying beneath the ground, and yet it seemed impossible that Clara was there in this hostile place. That her happy, vivacious, smiling child was no longer breathing, no longer exuding her boundless energy.
Minki finally stood up to go. Her mind was full of questions, but she had no strength left to challenge the people in charge. She wanted nothing more than to leave this place and get back to the boys and her father. She would stop in Berlin, of course, and tell Max what had happened. And one day, someone would have to atone for her child’s life. Someone would be made to suffer the agony she felt now. But first, she needed to sleep.
Minki stood for a while staring at her child’s grave, as if imprinting every detail on her memory. This unmarked grave was not where her daughter was supposed to end her life. She stumbled back down the stone steps, and round the side of the hospital. In reception, fighting back the tears, she left her name and her father’s address. ‘Please let me know when my daughter’s remains will be transferred.’
‘Of course, madam,’ said the nurse on reception, smiling sympathetically. She handed Minki an envelope. ‘The death certificate.’
Minki backed away, down the steps, clutching the envelope and the parcel of clothes. She laid them on the car’s passenger seat.
Eventually, she started the engine, and listened to the low rumble as she put the car in first gear. Driving towards the exit, she had to pass the front of the hospital. It was odd that, apart from that one distressed man in a ward, she had seen no patients at all. Where were they all? Puzzled, she stopped the car, climbed out and stood looking up for one final time at the gloomy brick façade. Suddenly, a young man ran down the steps of the hospital towards her. He looked agitated and tearful. A nurse in uniform was racing after him. ‘Come back,’ she shouted. The young man reached Minki, and fell into her arms. ‘Take me away, I beg you. They’ve already killed my brother…’
The nurse arrived and grabbed hold of the young man. ‘Heini, you’re very naughty. You’re to come back with me.’
‘Hang on,’ shouted Minki. ‘He says you’ve killed his brother.’
‘Oh, Heini,’ said the nurse, ‘that’s a terrible thing to say…’ She had her arm tightly wrapped round the boy’s waist. He was painfully thin and weak, Minki noticed – like the poor man she had seen earlier on the ward.
‘They tell some awful stories,’ said the nurse, ‘please don’t let it bother you. Come on, Heini,’ she said sweetly. ‘Back inside now…’
Minki watched as the sobbing boy was led back up the stairs to the front door and inside. At any other time she might have tried to defend him, but her grief suddenly enveloped her and she fell, howling, to the ground.
A little blond girl peered out of a top floor window and saw the woman crying. She held her hand up to the glass and silently mouthed the word: ‘Mutti’.
But Minki didn’t see her. She stumbled to her feet, climbed back into her car and drove away.
37
LONDON
Christmas 1941
The relentless bombing of London had left its mark. Yawning gaps opened up between buildings; jagged wooden beams, torn curtains and smashed sanitary units lay abandoned, like reminders of past lives. Every time Leila passed one of these bomb sites, she wondered what had happened to the inhabitants. Occasionally she spotted personal possessions among the debris – photographs still in their frames, frayed items of clothing. Their owners had obviously not survived.
She frequently thanked the God she did not believe in that Hampstead had so far largely been spared. It was one of her greatest fears – that one day she might walk back home to find her house and her beloved children had been destroyed.
As she walked to the bus stop one morning on the way to work, a dark yellowing fog descended on the city. People struggled to see their hands in front of their faces and, once she was on the bus, it crawled forward achingly slowly, preceded by a man carrying a lantern. It took over an hour to get to the Aldwych, and Leila had to run to Bush House, arriving over half an hour late.
Rushing into reception, she was surprised to see a tall Christmas tree dominating one corner of the entrance hall. She had been so been preoccupied with her parents’ predicament, coupled with concern about Clara and Minki, that she had almost forgotten it was Christmas. A couple of secretaries were taking it in turns to stand on a stepladder to decorate the tree with baubles and tinsel. They were being watched over by an anxious commissionaire. ‘You take care up there, miss, we don’t want any accidents before Christmas.’
Leila smiled at the friendly commissionaire and got into the lift, which descended with its familiar lurch into the basement. She hurried along the corridor towards the German section.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said to Yvonne, hanging up her coat and gas mask on the hooks by the door. ‘It’s a pea-souper out there.’
‘I know, don’t worry – everyone’s late. Hugh only arrived ten minutes ago.’
That day’s bulletins were dominated by the news that the Americans were finally joining with the British against Germany, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7December.
