Chapter Twelve

Ava was always happy to be home, but never more so than she was that day. She'd been taken in her father's chauffeur-driven car – he was home for barely a few hours before he had to go back to Berlin for the night – and they'd had a pleasant family lunch together. Although there wasn't a moment when she didn't think about the family living above them, silently, in the attic, and she expected the rest of her family felt the same. Sometimes she wondered if they could simply lock all the doors and bring them downstairs to join them, but she knew it would be too dangerous.

‘Ava, could you come with me please?'

Her father stopped at the kitchen as she stood talking with her mother, and she happily followed after him, curious about what he might want her for.

‘Are you certain you can't stay longer?' she asked as they walked to his study. ‘I miss us being together, all under the same roof. It would be so nice to have the weekend.'

‘One day, when work isn't so demanding, all I want to do is come home and never leave.' She heard the sadness in his voice, and wondered if he honestly thought it would ever all be over.

Shecould imagine such a time, although her problem was that she was supposed to be dreaming of a life with Heinrich once the war was over. A man whose head was filled with monstrous ideas, whose bed she was going to have to share if she couldn't find a way not to marry him. She shuddered at the thought of him ever touching her again.

Her father closed the door when they were in the room and turned on his music, before indicating that she should follow him. She watched as he opened a panel in his bookcase to reveal his safe, which as a girl she'd been fascinated with and had loved seeing, and now felt a great weight of responsibility at being given the code for. He made her repeat it to him, three times, before finally nodding and reaching inside to retrieve something.

‘I have identification papers in here that I want you to give Eliana,' he said. ‘I have only the one set of papers at this stage, but I believe we can at least get her out of there and into our home as a legitimate guest with these.'

‘Truly?' she asked, before throwing her arms around her father. ‘That's wonderful news. And the others? Will you be able to get papers for them, too?'

‘I fear that I won't have a solution for the rest of the family for some time,' he said. ‘But I'm doing my best.'

‘You think they'll have to remain in hiding until the end of the war? In our attic?'

She could tell from his eyes, the way his shoulders dropped slightly, that that was exactly what he thought.

‘I wish it were different, but it's only Eliana we can help right now, and I've risked a lot doing this for her. But if anything ever happens, if for some reason I don't return or we're discovered, you must take everything from the safe,' he said. ‘If I've managed to have papers prepared for them, for any of us, they will be in there. I'm trying to prepare for every possible situation.'

‘You think we might need false papers, too?'

He looked away for a moment, before turning his gaze back to her. ‘I think that there are officers who aren't loyal to our Führer any more, which is causing suspicion like never before. That's why young men like your Heinrich, who've proved themselves to be fanatical in their dedication to the party, are being welcomed home and transferred into new positions.'

‘Papa, about Heinrich,' she began, as goose pimples rippled across her skin.

‘I'm hoping he will be relocated soon,' he said. ‘He's become quite the favourite of Goebbels and Himmler, and they have plans for him outside of Berlin. I had hoped to send him elsewhere, but my efforts have been stymied at this stage.' She heard the hesitation in his voice, sensing his concerns, and wondered if something had changed, if somehow his influence had waned.

‘Papa, he's told me what they want for him, and he wants us to marry soon and have me move to a cottage near the, the—' She hesitated as his brow creased. ‘The concentration camp. He wants me to live nearby to where he'll be working.' She remembered what Hanna had told her, what she'd read in the papers at Goebbels' office. There was no way she could live so close, knowing what was happening there.

He studied her for a long moment, his expression impossible to read.

‘Turn the music up please, Ava,' he finally said, bringing the papers with him and sitting down in one of the armchairs.

She did as she was asked, and then settled down to listen to his quietly spoken words about what he needed her to do to ensure Eliana's safety, and just how he was going to delay her marriage to Heinrich. But it was something he said when they both stood, kissing her forehead as he embraced her, that she knew would forever echo through her mind.

I'm going to hell for what I've been part of, Ava, for the things I've ordered and been witness to, but I hope that this one small thing, this one family we're helping, will at least count for something.

Because it made her wonder just what her father had done in his role with the SS, what brutality he'd been part of, and how he intended on living with himself after the war. He might be her father, and she loved him dearly, fiercely even, but if she knew what he'd done? If she found out definitively that he'd had some part in what had happened to Lina? She feared that she might never be able to forgive him.

Ava spent an hour alone in her father's study, thinking through everything he'd told her, everything he'd asked her to consider. But when she heard her mother call out to her, she gathered herself and went to find her. There was no sign of her in the living room or kitchen, but then she saw a flash of movement outside and realised where they were. Ava took her jacket down from the hook near the back door, laced up her boots and went out to join her mother and sister.

‘What are you doing?' she called out as she walked.

They were some way from the house, but close enough that she could see they were gardening. Hanna appeared to be wielding a shovel and was digging, and her mother was carrying plants.

‘I didn't realise you were both so interested in gardening these days,' she said, folding her arms across her chest as she approached. It had certainly never been a favourite pastime of hers – she much preferred to stay indoors.

‘Ava, come and help me,' Hanna called, looking over her shoulder and waving for her to join them. ‘We need to do this as quickly as possible.'

‘Do what as quickly as possible?' she asked. ‘I'm not well versed in gardening, you know. Is this to be a new vegetable plot?'

She hadn't yet told her mother about Heinrich's mention of slave labour, although she suspected Hanna might have divulged it. Did that have something to do with their sudden interest in the garden?

‘We have jars to bury,' Hanna said. ‘Eliana helped me to prepare these.'

Ava absently picked one up, trying to see the contents. ‘This is the surprise you had for me?'

Hanna looked lighter than Ava had seen her for some time, and she crouched down beside her, having to move closer so she could hear her soft voice.

‘We created a jar for each child I've helped to save, so that one day there's a chance they can be reunited with their families. The children I've been helping to escape Berlin, Jewish children, inside is everything about where they lived, who their parents were, their grandparents...' Hanna paused a moment, as if she were about to cry and needed a moment to collect herself. ‘Who they were before all of this.'

Ava blinked away her own tears as she gently picked up one of the jars and sat down in the dirt, understanding the weight of what her sister was a part of.

‘You think it's safe to do this, in our garden?' she asked, gently. ‘This is such a beautiful gesture, Hanna, I only hope that we don't regret doing it here.'

‘If not here, then where?' Hanna asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and smudging dirt across her skin. ‘I've thought this over so many times, and I just want to make sure that every child I helped to smuggle out of Berlin has a chance at finding their family. It feels right to do this here, somewhere that can never be forgotten, can never be taken from us.'

‘Mama?' Ava asked, looking up as their mother came closer. ‘You're comfortable with doing this here? At our home?'

‘We're going to transplant larger seedlings from the vegetable garden, as well as flowers,' her mother said. ‘So long as we work quickly and bury them fairly deep, I think it's a lovely idea. No one will ever think to dig up a vegetable garden.'

Ava nodded. She wasn't comfortable with it, terrified that they might somehow be discovered and bring everything crashing down around them, but she certainly understood the sentiment. ‘This will be the only record? If those children survive, if their parents survive, this information could be what brings them back together?'

Hanna nodded. ‘This will be what gives them the chance to be a family again. So long as one of us survives, we will be able to dig them up and give the information to the authorities.'

And so Ava reached for one of the gardening tools and set about helping her sister, their mother digging up seedlings from another plot nearby. It seemed reckless, burying the jars so close to the house, having a permanent record that all but confirmed they'd been involved in the smuggling of Jewish children, but she knew it was the right thing to do.

‘How many do we have?' Ava asked, the dirt cool beneath her skin as she tucked the first jar deep into the earth and began to cover it.

‘Sixteen,' Hanna said.

Sixteen. Sixteen children who her sister had risked her life to save, who had been given a chance at living when so many others hadn't. Ava might be doing her best to follow her father's orders and memorise paperwork in the office, but it was going to take her a long time to do anything even remotely as ambitious or impressive as what her sister had already done for the cause.

‘Thank you,' Hanna said, as she passed her another jar.

‘What for?' Ava asked.

‘For not trying to stop me.' She paused. ‘Nothing has ever meant so much to me, Ava. I feel as if this is the only thing keeping me going sometimes, giving me a purpose, giving me something to focus on.'

‘Then we shall bury every single jar together,' Ava said, her heart breaking when she saw the pain etched on her sister's face. ‘But we must do it quickly, and then never speak of it again until the war is over. Agreed?'

Hanna nodded. ‘Agreed.'

Their mother came closer and knelt beside them then, and the three of them silently buried jar after jar, until all that was left before them was a patch of tilled soil, and a pile of plants that had to be thoughtfully placed in the earth to disguise the precious records buried beneath.

‘What we've done here is a beautiful thing,' their mother said. ‘One day, our bravery could allow a mother to reunite with her child, and then, despite everything, it will have been worth our risk.' If the mother and child were still alive to see that day. Ava couldn't help but think that those were the words her mother was thinking and had chosen not to utter.

When they stood, in a line, the three of them facing the garden, Ava knew she'd just witnessed something that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

‘There's something I've been thinking about,' Ava suddenly said, looking from Hanna to her mother. ‘Can we not take up extra mattresses to the Goldmans?' she asked, lowering her voice. ‘Surely we can do something to make it, well, to make it more comfortable up there? Can we bring them more clothes, too? More books?' More luxuries?

‘We can't do anything that would draw attention. If we were to take a mattress from one of our beds, Zelda would notice, and if we had a new one delivered, the old one simply couldn't disappear,' her mother said. ‘We're doing everything we can, but we have to be careful. Every decision we make, every item we take up there, has to be done in a way that will avoid notice entirely, which is why we're simply trying to put what was already stored up there to good use.' Her mother paused. ‘But perhaps you could find more books or board games for Eliana and David? Those are the types of personal items we can easily give them.'

Ava nodded. Finding books for them was the least she could do.

That night, when the house was silent and it was just Ava, Hanna and her mother in residence, she went up to the attic while the other two prepared food for their guests – only her second time going back up since she'd discovered them living there. She was surprised how homely they'd made the attic with what little they had, although that didn't diminish the sadness she felt at seeing them all crammed into the small space. She imagined it would be like being a caged animal; pacing back and forth with no way of escape, desperate to get back out into the world again.

‘Ava,' Eliana said the moment they saw her, the light from their oil lamps sending shadows around the space and making it difficult at first to see all four of them. Ava could see that her presence made them nervous, and she wished she could tell them how truly sorry she was, how much she regretted the way she'd behaved. But she knew that the way to gain their trust was to prove to them that she cared, which was what she intended on doing.

‘I don't know how to begin,' she said, the words difficult to find. ‘I—'

Her eyes found their way to David, who was watching her intently. She remembered him then, years earlier, when he'd carried her library books for her all the way to their apartment block. But with that memory came another, and she wished she could shut it out.

Ava and her BDM friends sat at a little table, licking their ice creams and chatting in the sunshine. Until one of the girls shrieked in horror and pulled her seat back as a well-dressed young man walked down the road, a yellow star pinned to his chest, marking him for the world to notice.

Ava knew immediately who he was, but when the other girls began to make a fuss and chant a song, as his eyes met hers, pleading, she looked away. She sung the little song beneath her breath, expecting him to hunch his shoulders and walk away, but instead he straightened, as if he couldn't hear their cruel taunts.

‘Dirty Jew,' called one of the older girls, hurling her ice cream at David and hitting him square on the back, like she'd thrown a ball at him. But instead of a ball rolling to the ground, the creamy liquid stuck to his jacket and then began to dribble down the fabric. But he didn't stop, just kept on walking, his head still held high.

‘My father says they'll all be gone soon,' one of the other girls said.

Ava returned her attention to her ice cream, only looking over her shoulder once to see where the boy was, to see whether the sun had baked the cream stain into his jacket, but he had already disappeared.

‘My father has asked me to share some news with you,' she said, transferring her gaze to Eliana and trying not to think about the past. ‘I'd also like to say that I deeply regret the way I behaved when I first discovered you here. It came as quite a shock to me, but—'

‘You have news?' David interrupted. ‘Please, tell us what you've come up to say.'

She glanced at him, clearing her throat while his parents moved to sit on the footstools that had been placed near the centre of the attic. She chose to perch on the floor, rather than take one of their precious luxuries from them.

‘My father has returned to Berlin, but he entrusted me with these before he left.' She took the papers from her pocket and passed them directly to Eliana.

‘What are you giving me?' she asked.

‘Identification papers,' Ava replied. ‘You are now Eleanor Müller, or Elly for short.'

Eliana's eyes widened as she examined the papers, before looking up. ‘Where are the rest? You only have the one set?' She frowned. ‘I'm to share your surname?'

Ava shifted uncomfortably. ‘I'm sorry, but this is all he's been able to obtain so far,' she said. ‘He told me that it's a painstaking process to ensure that the lineage is perfect, that no one can question who you are. He wanted the papers to be watertight, especially as you would be living as one of our family members.'

‘It's because Eliana is the only one of us who can pass for not being a Jew,' David said, his voice rising in a way Ava hadn't heard before. ‘Isn't it?'

She took a deep breath. ‘My father wants Eliana to stay with us, as his niece, before she begins a job in the city. He believes she will be useful to the resistance, if she is willing, and that no one will think to question her lineage as a Müller.'

Eliana gasped at the same time as David glowered at Ava. ‘You want to leave me to rot up here, while my sister fights? I'm to stay here and be forgotten?'

‘David—' Ava began.

‘I've already told Hanna, I have to do something, I have to do anything other than stay up here like a coward. I don't know how much longer I can stand it.'

Ava looked up at him and into clear blue eyes. ‘I am telling you that if there was anything I could do, anything my father could do, he would have done it by now. But you are not a coward.' Her lower lip trembled as she paused, seeing the pain on his face, the trembling of his body as he stood before her. ‘There is only one coward in this room, and it is me, not you. So please don't call yourself that name again.'

She saw the tight clench of his jaw when she spoke, knew how much it frustrated him to remain in the attic and accept his fate.

‘David, I promise that we will find a way to get you out of here, but right now Eliana can help us. She can become part of the resistance in a way that you can't. And quite frankly, you're right. She can pass for one of my family members in a way that you can't, and there's nothing I can do about that.'

‘Your father is adamant this will work? That she will be safe if she leaves us?' Herr Goldman asked.

Everyone looked to Ava.

‘Herr Goldman, Papa wanted me to tell you that Eliana will be treated as family in the same way that Hanna and I are, due to his position and the lineage he has created for her. He said that there will be risk involved, as the family she will work for are part of the resistance, but that it is a worthy cause. Both Hanna and I are working with my father, so he said he's risking his own daughters, too, not just Eliana.'

‘Please, Papa,' Eliana implored as Ava watched. ‘You have to let me go. I cannot stay here knowing that there's something I could be doing to help.'

David turned away, going to the far corner of the attic as his sister stared after him. Ava watched him for a moment, before deciding to go to him – as much to speak to him as to let Eliana exchange words with her parents in partial privacy.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, quietly, as she approached him. ‘I am truly sorry, for everything.'

He grunted, but she saw his shoulders move up and down, as if he'd taken a deep breath.

‘What if there was a way you could help? Something you could do from here?' she asked.

‘Ava, there's nothing I can do from here. Don't you think I've tried to think of something? If I have to stay here, then I'm useless.'

‘Useless is better than dead.' She clamped her hand over her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that. ‘I'm sorry, I—'

‘You were being honest,' he said, laughing despite the soberness of their conversation. ‘But honestly, sometimes I wonder whether this is worth it. Because this isn't living, Ava. What we're doing up here, this is surviving, nothing more. I don't know how long I can continue like this, how long anyone could live like this.'

She looked at David, really looked at him, and for the first time she saw him for who he truly was. And it broke her heart. He was just one man, but suddenly, to her, he represented all the men she'd never thought about when they'd disappeared.

‘Our life has gone from being full of friends, work, study...' He looked away, as if he were naturally turning to look out of a window, only there wasn't one, because it had been permanently covered with blackout fabric. ‘I'd just begun to study to be a doctor, did you know that? I had my whole life planned out, so many dreams about what I wanted to do, about the places I wanted to work.'

Ava swallowed away a lump of emotion in her throat. ‘David, I want you to have those dreams again, I do. I don't want this to be your life any more than you do, but right now, there's nothing more we can do than promise to keep you safe.'

‘Then speak to your father again. At least try to get me a gun, any kind of weapon, to protect my parents if they come for us.'

‘I will get you a gun, David. I give you my word,' she said, lifting a hand and hesitantly touching his arm, feeling his tense muscles soften beneath her touch. ‘If that's what you need to feel safe, then consider it done.'

They stared at one another for a long moment, before he eventually nodded.

‘Thank you, Ava. I will never forget the kindness shown by your family to ours.'

She was about to pull away when his hand closed over hers for the briefest of seconds.

‘And you're not a coward, Ava.'

When she turned back to Eliana, all she could think about was David and how his words had touched her. He would have made a brilliant doctor, for he was clearly kind, compassionate and smart. She only hoped that one day he'd be able to put those skills to use. She also looked down at her own hand, the palm she'd touched him with, wondering how she'd ever believed it was wrong to make contact with a Jew, that somehow she could become sick or be harmed by them by virtue of their religion. It seemed ridiculous now, as if she'd woken from a dream.

‘Eliana?' Ava asked, looking from her to her parents.

‘Where will my sister be working?' David asked, coming to stand behind her.

‘At a grocer's in the city. They're good people and they'll take good care of her. They're people who've been deeply involved in the resistance from the very beginning, according to my father.' She looked at Ava, then her parents, and finally back at David. ‘My father will say that she wants to help Germans, but that she has no formal training as a nurse or teacher. It will be a good cover for her choosing to work there, for the greater good.'

‘You promise me she'll be safe?'

Ava nodded to him. ‘I hope so, David.'

It simply wasn't a promise she was willing to make.

Two hours later, after leaving Eliana with her family to eat dinner before going back for her, they stood in her room as Eliana tried clothes on. She'd always been slender, but having not used her muscles properly for so long and no doubt fretting constantly, she was swimming in Ava's clothes. They certainly didn't appear tailored, as they should have.

‘I thought this might be an occasion for hot chocolate,' Hanna said, walking into the room with a tray of mugs.

‘Well, we're going to be up half the night sewing,' Ava said, gratefully taking one from the tray. ‘So thank you, it's exactly what I need.'

‘I feel so guilty, being down here, acting like normal again while David and my parents are up there,' Eliana whispered. ‘It feels so wrong. It feels like when I first left them, when I had to leave David behind in our apartment. We've always been so close, and I kept thinking then that he'd have never left without me.'

Ava and Hanna exchanged glances, but it was her sister who spoke first.

‘Remember that you will be doing work that might eventually free them. If there was a way for David to join us safely, I would have insisted we utilise him, too. Perhaps we still can, actually.'

‘How so?' Eliana asked.

‘How is his typing?'

Eliana laughed as she turned her back so Ava could do the buttons up on another dress. ‘Terrible. But he's a quick study and he's desperately in need of something to do.'

‘Then leave it with me. I shall find a typewriter and something useful for him to do. Something to keep his mind busy, so that he can feel as if he's contributing.'

Ava noticed the way Eliana smiled, the way her shoulders straightened at the very idea that her brother might have a role, after all. If there was anything she could personally do to get him out of the attic, Ava would have, but at the very least she knew she'd find him the gun he'd asked for. All David wanted was a way to protect his family, and she intended on giving it to him. It was the least she could do.

‘When do I start work at the grocer's?' Eliana asked.

‘Monday,' Ava said. ‘We'll have a car to take us back to the city early in the morning, and I'll take you there myself before work. You're simply to provide an extra set of hands, and if anyone asks, you are to say you didn't want to be idle.'

‘And they're people I can trust? People who will know who I really am?'

Ava nodded. ‘They will know you're Jewish, if that's what you're asking, and that you need to be protected. But they will know nothing of your family name or your past, to protect them as much as you.' She paused. ‘And us.'

Eliana turned before them in the dress and both she and Hanna groaned. It was no exaggeration to say that it would take them all night to create a wardrobe fit for a young woman who was to be their wealthy cousin from Munich. But there was no disputing that Eliana looked beautiful, and by the time they'd coloured her hair blonde and put a little make-up on her, Ava doubted even an SS man would be able to walk past her in the street without turning his head.