by Lily Graham
The barn became the obvious choice, and in the morning when Asta and Trine went to the hospital to check on Jürgen, and then on to work, he set about making it into something liveable for himself and Jürgen, when he was recovered.
Asta found him sitting in the barn, next to Millie the horse, when she got home later that day. He was brushing the mare, and there was fresh straw and water for her. Asta had brought blankets, and a spare rolled-up mattress.
She smiled as she saw him, though she couldn’t help the flood of nerves that overcame her. Shortly after their kiss the night before, Trine had come home. They’d heard her footsteps on the drive, and had broken apart, breathing heavily. Thankfully, Trine hadn’t noticed. It was she who suggested the barn, though, so perhaps Asta’s aunt had guessed more than she let on.
He’d managed to create a fire in an old drum, and the barn was if not toasty, at least not freezing. She nodded at the now clean stall next to Millie’s, the blankets still in her arms, like a safety net. ‘I’m sorry it’s so rustic.’
He shook his head. ‘After the places your brother and I stayed over the past few months – this is luxurious.’
She nodded. There was still so much to know, so much to ask about their escape.
He regarded her gravely. ‘So, they did the surgery?’
‘Yes. The bullet’s been taken out – he should recover fully, so Malthe says. They’re just going to keep him for another week to be sure.’
‘I’ll go visit him tomorrow.’
She nodded, and there was an awkward silence.
‘Asta?’ he said.
‘Yes?’ Her heart started to thud.
‘You know’ – he looked down as he brushed the mare – ‘you don’t owe me anything.’
She frowned, confused, then glared up at him, throwing the blankets onto the swept floor.
‘Thanks,’ she said thinly, and turned to leave.
He caught up with her fast, but she was too angry to even look at him. ‘Just leave me.’
But he wouldn’t. ‘I just mean—’ he said.
She twisted up to look at him. ‘I know what you mean…’ Then she wrenched her arm from his.
He closed his eyes, and listened to her stomp away.
Dinner was tense. Trine pretended not to notice as she told them all that she’d heard, news about the Resistance. ‘They’re not backing down,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they expected that.’
Asta nodded, but she wasn’t listening.
After dinner, Oliver stopped over, and Asta wished that she’d made her excuses and stayed in the hospital with Jürgen instead.
When Oliver suggested that they go for a walk, she agreed, not inviting Kalle along, and the two went for Bjørn’s usual evening stroll, though all too soon, she regretted that too, as Oliver kept trying to hold her hand, to hold and kiss her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she lied. ‘I’m just so distracted – everything with Jürgen – the shock, excitement.’
He’d nodded, his face concerned, but full of understanding. ‘Of course.’
There was a long pause and then he asked. ‘And that man, Kalle? Will he be staying for a while?’
Asta frowned. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
It was sometime after one, when the kitchen door crept open, and Asta sat up from her nest at the kitchen bench.
There was Kalle, just inches from her. She blinked in surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Then he touched her face, gently. ‘I just – I’ve thought about you for a long time—’ He broke off. He blew out a breath of warm air that tickled her neck. ‘I just – I didn’t expect you to feel the same, that’s all I meant.’
Her heart started beating faster. She nodded. Then looked down. ‘I’ve thought of you too.’
When he kissed her that time, it was softer, gentler, and then more demanding. She’d never wanted anything more than she did right then.
By the time Jürgen came home from hospital it was clear to Asta that she was in trouble.
She’d been slipping out every night to see Kalle, and they spent the night in each other’s arms. Where everything the two had been through, all the stress and constant fear, all the grief and pain, falling for each other was like stumbling across a river, in a desert, and they drowned in each other, getting lost in the magic of being young, and in love.
27
Asta worried about telling Oliver and hurting him, and she put it off for far too long.
‘I don’t mind that the two of you have fallen for each other. I mean – after everything that boy did to save Jürgen – to save you – trust me – I can understand it,’ said Trine one night, catching her arm, just before she was about to head to the barn to sit by the fire drum with Jürgen and Kalle.
The pair had beds either side of Millie’s stall now, and Asta had become like a thief in the night, sneaking into Kalle’s whenever she was sure that Jürgen was asleep.
‘But Oliver is a kind boy – and in his own way he saved you too. He deserves better than this.’
Tears slipped down Asta’s cheeks, and she didn’t bother denying it. ‘I know.’
She made up her mind to tell him the next day, but as fate would have it, Oliver saw her with Kalle before she got the chance. It was early in the morning, just after the bells had rung for the new year, when Oliver had thought to come past for a new year’s kiss, and found her, standing outside against the harbour lights, being kissed by somebody else.
When Asta hadn’t seen him for several days, and he refused to see her, she figured that her secret had come out somehow. It was like a blow to the chest. She didn’t feel for Oliver the way he did about her, but she cared for him deeply. Every word that Trine had said was true. Oliver was her best friend, and it killed her that she had hurt him. In typical Oliver style, he hadn’t told anyone what had happened – loyal to the end. But Asta guessed when Lisbet asked one day when she’d come around to Trine’s with a box of pastries and to see how Jürgen was getting on – and she mentioned the night that Oliver had come past to start his new year on the right note, and Asta realised what must have happened.
With Jürgen’s skills as an artist, he was soon given a job at the Elsinore Gazette, and began working alongside Trine. Kalle had found a job at the Øresund harbour, where they didn’t ask too many questions about his background, and thankfully hadn’t run a police check – or they might have discovered that he was wanted for assaulting a German officer, and suspected of transporting refugees illegally across the border. If caught, he could spend years in prison or be sent to a concentration camp himself.
Asta found that for the first time in years, she was actually happy. She spent her days in the bookstore, where despite the occupation there was a constant demand for new reading material, and she got to know her regular customers and befriend the rest of the staff. Her evenings spent talking to Jürgen, Trine and Kalle were filled with laughter, fun and, late at night, love.
Things with Oliver hadn’t returned to normal, but she missed him, as did Bjørn. Asta didn’t stop trying to see him, and eventually she got lucky one lunchtime. It was Bjørn who spotted him first; his happy bark made her look up in surprise. Then she saw Oliver walking outside the store, and managed to run after him.
‘Oliver!’ she cried. He stopped in his tracks, and turned slowly. The look that passed across his face made her wince. It was naked with pain.
‘I – I’m so sorry, Ollie.’
He didn’t say anything and tears filled her eyes.
‘I never meant for that to happen, I hope you know that.’
He didn’t respond and her heart ached as she stared at his beloved face.
‘I do love you.’
He closed his eyes, and sighed. ‘Just not the way I love you, though.’
‘No.’ There was no use in denying it.
Then he frowned. ‘I don’t get it. We’re – well, we would be perfect together. That man – Kalle, he’s—’
She nodded. He
was rough, and a bit wild. Oliver wasn’t wrong. ‘I think that when it happens you just can’t help it. Kalle—’ she said, and he winced at the name. ‘We’ve been through something together.’
‘And we haven’t!’ he cried.
Asta dashed away a tear. He was right, of course he was. He had been her best friend, patiently coaxing her out of herself when she thought she’d lost her twin. For a long time, he’d been the only reason she got out of bed in the morning. She loved him, but as a friend, and unfortunately it was the deep pull of her attraction for Kalle that had made her truly see that.
‘It’s because he brought Jürgen back, isn’t it? Who could compete with that? I mean, look at you – it’s like you’re all put back together again. If I could have found Jürgen myself and brought him to you, you know I would have done.’
Asta blinked. ‘I know that, of course I do, Ollie. Of course I will always be grateful to Kalle for that. Just like I am to you for being my friend when I needed one more than anything in this world. But it wasn’t just that – it’s – I can’t help it – I just—’
‘You’re attracted to him – that—’ He didn’t finish, and Asta’s heart broke just a little more; even now, even after he’d been so hurt, Oliver had such control, couldn’t call Kalle the names he probably deserved.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. Not knowing if it was crueller to tell the truth or to lie. Only knowing that he must not think there was something he could have done, some way he could have tried harder – it wasn’t like that.
‘But I didn’t choose him over you – I hope you can understand that.’
He looked hurt and confused. ‘Of course you did.’
‘I will never not want you in my life, Oliver, as my friend.’
Oliver took a deep breath. ‘I – I don’t know if I can… if I ever will be able to.’
And she watched him walk away with tears coursing down her cheeks.
A few weeks later, Asta had something else to worry about. A wave of nausea spread over her; it was the third time in a week that she’d felt like this. She pushed back the plate of food that been placed before her, excused herself from the table, and rushed to the sink to bring it up.
Trine looked at her in surprise. Then she shook her head. ‘Oh, Asta,’ she said.
Asta ran the tap and gulped down water. ‘I’m sorry – I know it’s wasteful – I couldn’t help it. It happens sometimes when I’m anxious, you know that.’
Trine stared at her, then put her rye bread back on her plate. ‘But you are not anxious.’
‘Only a little,’ she admitted.
To be honest, over the past few months, since Jürgen had arrived with Kalle, she hadn’t felt much anxiety. Even though they were living through the occupation – they were together, and things were better, better than they had been in years.
‘Oh, Asta, child,’ she said. ‘You’re about to get a whole lot more anxious very soon.’
Asta frowned, then her eyes widened. She hadn’t studied university level veterinary science not to get there pretty quickly. She gasped. She looked up at her aunt, who nodded. ‘Pregnant.’
28
When the first snowdrops appeared, Asta and Kalle married in a civil ceremony. She wore a dress that Trine made her from two of her old frocks, and a slip of satin from Lisbet. Asta had been touched by the women’s generosity. Lisbet tried her best not to let the fact that she had broken her son’s heart mar her friendship or affection for the girl.
‘Probably if she hadn’t gone through hell I could just comfortably despise her in peace,’ she told Trine, as the two had sat making the dress a week before the ceremony – it was a surprise gift, in a time of making do and mending.
‘She did make it hard, I’m sorry,’ said Trine.
Lisbet had sighed. ‘Well, he’ll find someone someday.’
‘You know she loves him, right?’
Lisbet nodded. ‘She just loves that scrubby bear-man more.’
And for some reason this made the two of them howl with laughter.
The ceremony was a simple affair, but one full of love. There wasn’t champagne or luxuries. The cake was a kind of odd blend of ingredients made with powdered egg, that somehow tasted delicious, despite all the laws of science.
It would have tasted delicious no matter what to Asta and Kalle and to Jürgen and Trine, who had learned to grab with both hands the small, special moments when they occurred, as you could never be sure when or if they would happen again.
As spring turned to summer, and Asta’s belly swelled, Jürgen moved into the kitchen to give the two newlyweds privacy, and Trine thought rather seriously of finding a new residence for the mare, Millie, so that the pair could have a proper home.
The one thing giving them all hope for the future in the late summer of 1943 was that most people began to feel that Germany was losing the war. More and more Danes began to join Resistance movements, showing the Germans that they were no longer afraid and many didn’t recognise their authority. It was all starting to seem as if things might finally turn around, but then on 29 August, the day that Asta went into labour, Germany proclaimed martial law, imposing stricter, tighter measures.
29
Things changed overnight. More and more soldiers were deployed into Denmark, to take matters in hand – to put an end to the Resistance.
One of those soldiers was Franz Smidt. Who had been left at the hospital – his uniform stolen, tied and bound and left half naked on Jürgen’s dirty hospital bed. Betrayed by the ranger and border patrol officer Kalle Blomkvist and the boy who had tried to kill him – the boy whose sister had escaped his clutches and made a mockery of him and ruined his chances of promotion. He’d felt a sense of shame in being bested by the children before but this was even worse – for a proud man like Smidt, this was utter humiliation, and this time he wanted more than justice – he wanted revenge. He wanted each one of their heads.
He’d tracked down Blomkvist’s home – not hard once Denmark was under occupation, and then he’d begun to put the story together – to realise just how far back Blomkvist had gone against them. He’d been to Copenhagen several times with his drawing of the girl and a photograph they had on file of the boy and Kalle Blomkvist. But nothing had turned up. Then, despite his obsession, he’d been deployed elsewhere.
It was at a chance meeting in a café in Vissenbjerg, two hours away from the border, that he showed a picture of the girl who resembled so much the brother that he was now looking for. For a tidy sum, one of the café regulars – a man with a handlebar moustache and bulging grey eyes – told the remarkable tale of a young girl who had fled through a bathroom window, a few years before.
‘I was there the day it happened. Saw this girl covered in mud, hair like she’d fallen down a ravine, come into the café… couldn’t speak Danish, asked for the toilet with a heavy accent and seemed confused, and said sorry in German. Then one of the waitresses, Martina, stood speaking to her husband – he’s a taxi driver, apparently, he picked her up and was meant to be taking her somewhere… only she ran away, didn’t she?’
Smidt paid for his coffee, then gave the man another bill. ‘Do you know where the driver was supposed to take her?’
‘Elsinore.’
‘Are you sure?’
The moustachioed man nodded. ‘Heard him and the wife speaking as he ran into the street to look for her – he didn’t see me. He said he was called just after dawn and paid a small fortune to take her there. Then she ran away. I’m not likely to forget something like that.’
He nodded. ‘No,’ he said, then smiled.
It took a word here and there to be asked to be stationed in Elsinore.
‘Why do you want to go there?’ said his commanding officer, signing it off. It wasn’t a big city, after all.
‘There’s someone I’d like to find.’
The officer had smiled like he understood, and Smidt deflected it, because he understood nothing.
30
Arrests were made of prominent Jews and citizens who were vocal against the Nazi party. The rumours that Jews were going to be rounded up and sent off to concentration camps, like they had in the rest of Europe, spread like wildfire. Many Jews began to flee their homes, hiding out in their friends’ houses and barns, but when nothing appeared to happen in the weeks that followed, some returned.
Asta and Jürgen knew that time wasn’t on their side. They’d been through this once before. It hadn’t helped to wait then and they were sure it wouldn’t help now either.
Lisbet offered them their own barn to hide and wait.
It turned out – for the moment at least – to be a blessing, as while walking outside with Jonna, wrapped inside a blanket, Jürgen saw an officer with red hair in the distance. It was Smidt.
He ducked quickly back inside Lisbet’s barn.
‘Smidt is here,’ he told them when he returned, handing over his niece to his twin.
‘No!’ cried Asta, her heart jack-hammering inside her chest. ‘Did he see you?’
Jürgen shook his head. ‘No – he was looking the other way, thank God. He was holding a piece of paper that had all of our sketches on it – he must have worked with an artist. Maybe someone told them we were staying with Trine …’
Kalle’s blue eyes were wide. ‘Hopefully, he doesn’t know about the Sørensens, well, not yet.’
‘For now,’ said Asta. ‘How long before someone tells him who Trine’s friends are?’
Lisbet shook her head. ‘No one here will betray you.’
Asta looked at her askance. ‘How else would he have known to look here – someone must have recognised us.’