by Karen Swan
Jacques fell to his knees beside his mother’s chair. ‘Why did you never say this?’ he cried. ‘How could you let us – let the whole world – think that he was a traitor?’
Magda raised a hand to his cheek. ‘To keep you safe, my boy. Let them tell lies. I would have weathered anything to keep you with me.’
‘But the war ended years ago.’
Magda shook her head. ‘Not for me.’ She fell silent, her eyes as gentle on her son’s as they had been hard on Flora and Noah.
No one said a word. Both Xavier and Noah had moved back to the centre of the room, standing, almost side by side, in front of Magda’s chair. But Flora didn’t see them – the only person in her sights was Magda, still hiding the full truth.
‘Tell him.’
Magda glared at her. ‘I have! His father was a hero. What more do you want?’
‘I want you to tell him the reason why you’ve kept that a secret for all these years. Why you’ve remained silent and let your husband’s good name – and the reputation of your family – be vilified. What could be worse than what you’ve endured?’
Magda said nothing, just gave a careless, dismissive shrug.
‘I know what.’
‘You know nothing!’
Slowly Flora raised her arm and pointed at the portrait. ‘There’s a very good reason why you collapsed when you saw this here. It tells the truth even if you stay silent. You’ve done everything you can since you came into this room to keep attention off that painting and on you.’
Jacques’ expression changed as her words settled, his body stiffening as he stared at the woman in greater detail. Unthinking, he withdrew his hand from his mother’s, pulling a gasp of anguish from Magda.
‘You should never have gone in there!’ she cried, directing her fury at Flora all over again, her voice as splintered as wood breaking beneath a great weight. ‘Never!’
The old woman began to sob.
Lilian looked over at her. ‘Flora? What’s going on?’
Flora’s voice was quiet. ‘The ring, Lilian. Look at her ring.’
She watched as the facts lined up like a slot-machine win in their minds, the reason why that particular woman had always seemed so familiar to her suddenly now so clear. She knew exactly what Von Taschelt, and latterly Travers, had been trying to protect – and it had been smuggled out of the house in that big crate with the painting inside. It was the reason it had been found set apart from the others, all alone in Apartment 6 – the secret room where the Nazis wouldn’t have known, or even thought, to look.
The room swelled with silence.
Jacques, who looked ashen, stared at the painting with dawning incredulity before looking down at his own hand. ‘. . . She’s my mother?’
‘No! I am!’ Magda cried, grabbing his hand again and clutching it so tight that her knuckles blanched, the ring hidden from view again. ‘I kept you safe, I raised you. You’re mine. My boy. My boy.’
But Jacques couldn’t take his eyes off the woman in the painting, the woman with the same ring, the same eyes.
Magda slumped, the fight trickling out of her as she saw the truth settle on her son’s face, a truth she had hoped never to live to see.
‘He stole me?’ Jacques cried, sounding stricken.
‘He saved you. And many more besides! He worked for the OSE, don’t you see? He used his consignments to smuggle children to Switzerland and America. He had the perfect cover story – packing every crate himself, giving the child a sedative that would make them sleep through the journey, accompanying them every step of the train journey and sitting in the cargo departments with the crates in case they woke up or cried. And all the while, he was pretending he was safeguarding valuables of the Reich, lying to the faces of the Blackshirts.’
OSE? Flora had heard of it, of course. The Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, or the ‘Children’s Aid Society’ had been a French-Jewish humanitarian movement that worked with the Resistance, going underground in the early forties. But to learn that Franz had been one of their number? She swallowed, feeling disorientated by the revelation. Where was terra firma with this family? What was real and what wasn’t? Who was good and who bad? She looked across at Jacques and Lilian but it was clear they didn’t know the answer either.
‘But you, my darling? We couldn’t let you go to strangers. When he learned your parents – our dearest friends – were being set up, it was all he could offer. I was already in Switzerland.’ Her voice was thin. ‘Your two brothers and your sister were too big . . . they had been seen, counted, on the first visit. But you weren’t in the room, you were sleeping, not yet two . . . The Germans didn’t know you were there.’ Magda’s face crumpled, pleating into deep folds like an origami puppet and she covered her face with her hands. ‘They were such beautiful children,’ she sobbed, her voice shredded now. ‘But the house was being watched. There was no other way to get you out. You were the only one he could save. The only one.’
Flora felt her own tears come, her hands at her mouth as she watched Jacques fold in half as the loss of his family was laid bare – his beautiful mother, his father, his older siblings whose only crime was to be Jewish, whose fate was sealed by their age and size. It was that simple and that tragic. He sobbed, heavy retching sounds that came from a primal source, Lilian wrapping herself over him like an exoskeleton and weeping too at the sight of her broken husband, Magda like a prisoner in the dock, awaiting the judge’s verdict.
Noah sank into the opposite fireside chair, looking thunderstruck. Jacques was his cousin? ‘I . . . I’m so sorry.’ He looked sick.
Flora went and sat beside him, feeling a certain sympathy for him. He’d been so self-righteous in his loss, so certain he was the only victim. How could he possibly have known the truth? He looked at her, guilt ringed with devastation. ‘Flora, I didn’t know.’
‘No,’ she said sadly, watching Jacques and Lilian huddle together like wounded animals, a look of desolation on Xavier’s face, Magda as alone and silent in her suffering as she’d ever been; after all, she’d had seventy-three years of practice. ‘No, you didn’t. That was the point.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The cloudburst was fierce, hurling down stinging rain in torrents, but Flora was glad of it. The thought of walking into that courtroom on a bright, shiny day would seem perverse, to be surrounded by office workers in shirtsleeves on their way to have lunch in the park, women trying to tan their legs in their lunch hour, whilst her family were cloistered in an airless, sunless room being torn apart by lies.
Flora turned away from the window as she heard someone come into the kitchen. Her father was opening his briefcase and shuffling through the papers inside, a fixedly impassive expression on his face.
‘Goddammit!’ He slammed the lid down hard, a fist pressed to his forehead. ‘Where the hell is it?’ he said to himself.
‘Where’s what?’
He looked up, surprised to see her curled on the windowsill, her knees tucked up by her chest.
‘My BlackBerry. I can’t find it anywhere. I swear I had it last—’
‘It’s in the fridge.’
Her father looked dumbfounded. ‘F . . . ?’ He couldn’t get the word out.
‘I know. I thought it was weird too,’ she shrugged. ‘But I didn’t know if it was some techno thing you do – you know, to improve battery life or whatever.’
‘No. No,’ he mumbled, baffled and walking over to the fridge to see for himself. ‘It’s not some—’ He lifted it out, looking worried.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said gently. ‘There’s a lot going on.’
‘Yes, but there’s being busy and there’s being mad, Floss. I may be getting on but I am not so doddery that I put my own BlackBerry in the fridge.’
She rested her head against the cold glass of the window and smiled kindly. ‘If you say so. Is Mummy ready yet?’
‘Drying her hair,’ he mumbled, still staring at the chilled phone. He looked up at
her.
‘Any sign of him?’
She shook her head, biting her lip as she looked back out at the dreary street scene. Freds’s street was always quiet during the weekdays. Parking was residents only, and the right-turn-only sign at one end meant it wasn’t used as a rat run by taxi-drivers trying to get to the river.
‘He should be back by now,’ her father murmured, checking his watch. ‘He’s been gone – what? Nearly two hours now?’
‘I know but . . .’ Her voice trailed off; she understood exactly why he’d needed to be alone. He was due for the preliminary hearing at the Crown Court in an hour, and the dismantling of his life would begin. The press – entitled to be there – would, with minimal digging, soon realize he was tabloid gold: the son of the man who brought down the hammer on the Sunflowers, an arrogant posh boy not used to being told ‘no’. His name would be splashed everywhere, there were no rights to anonymity for him. ‘He’ll be here.’
‘But the car’s coming in twenty minutes.’
Actually, it was already parked outside – she’d watched it pull up a few minutes ago – but Flora kept that to herself. It wouldn’t do for everyone to start getting fractious about Freds’s whereabouts when they were, officially, ahead of time. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy. Freds knows what he’s doing.’
‘You don’t think—’
‘No,’ she said quickly, knowing he was worrying that Freddie had done a runner. ‘I really don’t. He wouldn’t do that. Freds will face up to this.’
They were quiet for a moment. ‘Do you want a drink?’ her father asked, desperation in his voice.
‘No, thanks.’
‘I think I need something more fortifying than tea.’
She watched as he wandered over to the kitchen cupboard and poured himself a finger of whisky, before opening the fridge and pulling out some ice from the ice tray, replacing the BlackBerry on the shelf below.
Flora bit her lip but didn’t say anything. She could retrieve it for him in a minute, once he went to check on her mother. She went back to watching the rain smear the windows. London was obscured – its stone buildings and rushing river just a smudge of grey – and she felt as though they were all in a bubble: dry, safe, together, sealed off from the outside world.
This was how the Vermeils must have felt, she knew, as shame and humiliation had snapped at their heels; how they’d been driven to hide behind their high walls all summer, only those wall-mounted CCTV cameras every ten metres the unblinking eyes that dared to look out.
No. She took a deep breath and forced them – him – back out of her mind. She wouldn’t waste any emotional energy on him. Not today.
‘Oh! I think I see him!’ she said suddenly, sitting arrow-straight as she saw a forlorn, lanky figure round the corner and trudge its way up the glistening street. He was still in his jeans and Vans – no jacket – and was soaked through. In another minute he’d be alongside the car sitting idle by the kerb, ready to whisk him to court.
Flora jumped down from the sill. Freds was going to need to change into his suit in double-quick time. ‘I’ll get the door for him,’ she said, running across the flat and flinging open the door. ‘Oh, hey, Troy!’ she said as she almost collided with him in the communal hall.
‘Hey.’ Troy was clad head to toe in black Lycra, a high-vis fluorescent vest on over his jacket, his eyes protected behind clear plastic goggles, some mud spatters dried around the rims. This wasn’t an unusual look. In fact, Flora wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her brother’s neighbour in ‘civvies’. He was a serious cyclist, choosing to ride the North Downs every Saturday morning – whatever the weather – before breakfast, and every holiday he took involved two wheels and an Alp.
‘Just going out?’ she asked politely, her eyes flicking to the communal door, knowing that any minute now she’d hear Freds’s key in the lock
‘Yeah.’ He double-locked his front door and snapped closed the chin strap for his helmet.
Flora stepped around him quickly to open the door onto the street. Freddie was already halfway up the steps.
‘Hey,’ she smiled brightly. ‘I saw you from the window. Thought I’d save you the bother of getting your keys out.’
‘Oh. Right. Thanks,’ Fred replied flatly. He saw Troy and stepped aside to let him pass. He tried to rally, keep up appearances. ‘Hey, man, how’s it going?’
Troy nodded. ‘Good, mate. Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around in a while.’
‘Working,’ Freddie nodded, rolling his eyes.
Troy skipped down the short flight of steps and started fiddling with the high-tech lock on his bike. ‘You given any more thought to coming out with me one weekend?’
‘Uh, yeah . . . yeah . . . I’m definitely thinking about it.’
Flora bit her lip as she watched her brother stuff his hands into his pockets, nodding away chummily as though his own future was his to control. She thought her heart might break just to see him trying so hard to appear normal, not a man twenty minutes from being driven to court for a rape trial.
‘Don’t think, just do,’ Troy replied, pocketing an Allen key in the back of his jacket and wheeling the carbon-fibre bike from its hiding spot behind the bins.
‘Had any more problems with thieves lately?’ Freddie asked, quickly changing the subject.
‘Not recently. This lock’s the nuts, although I reckon they know not to mess with me now.’ He swung a leg over the bike and sat on the saddle, only then noticing the flat tyre on his front wheel. ‘Agh! Motherfuckers!’
Flora tried to suppress a smile as he jumped off again, examining the wheel to find a slash mark as long as his thumb down the inner rim of the tyre. He swore violently under his breath before straightening up.
Freddie grimaced apologetically. ‘Sorry, mate.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ he panted, his hands on his hips, his cheeks pink with anger. ‘They won’t get away with this. I’ll have their faces to show the police this time!’ he said, his mouth drawn into a thin line.
‘What do you mean? How?’
Troy pointed to his bay sash window. A small black camera was only just visible sitting on the sill inside. ‘The police advised me to get it after the last bike went. We’ll see who’s got the last laugh now, shall we?’
Flora frowned. ‘. . . Troy, when did you get that?’
‘What? The camera?’
She nodded.
‘Earlier in the summer. July time, I guess.’
Flora felt her heart rate quicken as she glanced across at Freddie who was merely looking back at her, perplexed. ‘Do you keep the footage?’
‘Sure, it automatically uploads onto my Cloud every night. Why?’
Flora tried to stay calm. ‘Would it have captured people coming up these steps?’
‘It records every person, animal, goddam thief, that approaches the flats.’
Flora stared hard at Freddie with what he’d always called her ‘plotting face’, before looking back at Troy again. ‘Hey, Troy, if you’ve got a spare tyre, we can hold your bike for you while you go and get it, if you like.’ She smiled, trying to look helpful.
‘Oh, that’s decent. Thanks.’ Troy nodded, falling for her smile and passing the bike into her care, climbing carefully up the steps in his cleats.
Flora waited for the door to close behind him before she allowed herself a gasp. ‘Oh my God, Freddie, do you realize what this means?’
‘Not really, no.’ He looked back at her blankly.
‘Freds, you said Milly came over to your flat the day after, right? When she heard about you and Aggs breaking up.’
Freddie blanched, as though reliving events. ‘Yes, but I can’t prove it. No one saw her come in and her flatmate’s sticking to her story that she stayed in her room all evening, crying. And the street CCTV just shows someone in a hoody getting out of a cab. There’s nothing to show it’s her. We can’t see her—’ His eyes widened. ‘We can’t see her face!’
‘But I bet Troy�
��s camera can! And if you can show it’s her, it begs the very big question of why, if she’d been attacked by you, she would have willingly travelled back to your flat the very next day?’
Freddie threw his head back suddenly and laughed, his arms outstretched as the rain continued to pelt down. ‘Christ, Batty, you might just have blown a fucking great hole in her story!’
She propped the bike against the wall and cried, ‘I know!’, throwing her arms wide too and flinging them around his neck. He twirled her on the spot so fast her feet left the ground, both of them laughing and crying.
‘You always were my favourite sister,’ he beamed, hugging her tightly.
‘Oh my God, we’ve got to tell your barrister,’ she said, looking up at him, suddenly serious again.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I’ll call him now. Oh, no, wait.’ Freddie raked his hands through his hair. ‘Oh shit, what’s the time?’
She checked her watch and pulled a face. ‘He’ll already be at court. We need to leave right now. Quick, go get your suit on, the car’s waiting. I’ll try and see if I can find the footage on Troy’s Cloud.’
At that moment, Troy reappeared, the new inner tube limp in his hand. ‘Right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Let’s get—’
But Flora was already halfway up the steps, ushering him back into the building.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’
‘No time to explain, Troy,’ she said breathlessly, pushing on his back and urging him to move faster. ‘I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but this is massively urgent and we don’t have a moment to lose.’
‘But what about my bike?’ Troy protested, frowning as Freddie sprinted past them, already pulling his sodden T-shirt over his head.
‘You’re a good man, Troy,’ Freddie said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘I owe you a pint or ten.’
Three minutes later, Flora was on her way back out with a flash drive in her hand and a smile on her face. Her parents were already in the car, Freddie locking and double-locking the front door nervously, his hands shaking. He turned to face Flora, looking more scared now than he had at any other point, as though hope was the most terrifying proposition of all. ‘. . . Did you find it?’