Chapter Fifteen

ELIANA

Eliana stood in the store and looked around. It was just before opening, which meant the shelves had been stocked, and despite the people already lined up outside, it was still quiet inside. Silence had become normal for her during her months in the attic, the constant quiet so hard to adjust to at first, fuelled by a fear that had been all-consuming. If they made any noise, they could be found, which had led to them moving about like mice.

But despite all that, it hadn't taken her long to adjust to being back in the world, albeit in a different world to the one she'd left behind. No one saw her now. She was able to move about the store, talk to customers, live a life that hadn't been hers to live for years. She felt as if she were both visible and invisible at the same time – women she recognised as mothers from her old school had passed her and even spoken to her, without seeing her. The blonde hair and change of appearance hadn't truly changed what she saw in the mirror when she looked at herself – the same eyes blinked back at her, she wore the same expressions – but it had been enough to stop anyone from recognising her. Or perhaps it was simply that no one expected to see a girl like her any more; they clearly thought all the Jews had been well and truly eradicated from polite society. Regardless, she was no longer scared that someone might know who she was. The more days that passed, the more confident she became.

‘Eliana?' Ethan called to her and she turned, seeing that he was carrying more goods into the store. His blue eyes caught hers, and she couldn't help but admire his broad shoulders and strong arms as he hefted the box in front of him, his dark hair lifting from his forehead as he tilted his head back.

She ran over to help him, only too pleased to be of assistance. He'd been so kind to her since she'd arrived – he was shy but polite, warm yet a little nervous – which was incidentally exactly how she was feeling being around his family and in the store. It was the first time she'd ever had a proper job, but all those years helping her father had helped her settle quickly into her new role. She was just grateful Ethan was such a patient teacher.

Eliana helped Ethan to place the flour on the shelves, knowing how quickly it would disappear as soon as the doors opened for the day. By the time they were down to a few sacks, fights would begin as those queueing realised there wouldn't be enough for everyone waiting. Because according to Ethan, there was never enough, no matter how much they started with each day.

‘How are you?' he asked, glancing at her as they both placed the sacks of flour on the shelves.

‘I'm fine. Grateful, above anything else.'

He smiled, catching her eye. ‘You don't have to pretend with me. I know you must be missing your family.'

She hesitated. ‘You know about me, don't you? About how I came to be here?'

His smile was warm, and she found it so easy to be around him. The fact that he was the same age as her was refreshing too, after so long having only her parents and brother for company. She hadn't realised how much she'd been craving the company of others.

‘I know enough,' he replied. ‘But you can talk to me, when it's just the two of us. I promise that I'm very good at keeping secrets.'

Eliana laughed. ‘Well, I have a lot of them. Are you sure you want me to offload everything on you?'

Ethan laughed, too, and Eliana found herself wishing for more time with him as his father came in and called out that he was opening the doors. In other words, the chaos of the day was about to begin.

‘Ethan, has there been any news?' she whispered, as they readied themselves behind the counter. ‘Of what happened to all the Jews? Those that survived the first waves of violence?'

The laughter that had lit his eyes earlier was gone now. ‘No news that's good. There are multiple concentration camps where they're holding German, Polish and French Jews by the sounds of it. They've rounded them up all throughout Europe, and it's still happening.'

She shivered as she saw the sadness in his face. ‘You've lost someone you loved, to one of the camps?'

They both straightened as his father called out that everyone should make an orderly line; people she knew who were fervent supporters of Hitler's regime stood merely feet from her. It sent an initial shiver of panic through her, before she remembered they couldn't see her, her confidence returning at being able to stand before them, unseen.

‘I have,' he murmured. ‘And I don't believe they'll ever be coming home.'

Hours later, and with barely a grain of food left in the store, Eliana watched as Ethan closed the door and locked it, turning the sign to ‘Closed'. His father and uncle were in the main storeroom, receiving a delivery and getting everything prepared for the next day, which meant that it was just the two of them again.

Which meant it was also time to find out if any messages had been passed to Ethan during the day.

Eliana stretched and then found her way to the smaller storeroom that was hidden behind the others, waving to Ethan's father as she passed him and receiving a nod in reply. It was barely bigger than a broom closet, but hidden beneath a pile of old food sacks was a typewriter and reels of paper. Her job was to type up any information that needed to be shared with other members of the network that the Müller family were involved with, but most often she was simply to receive any messages and take them home with her for Karl. To begin with, from what she understood, they'd wanted to take over what the White Rose had begun – spreading information far and wide by leaflet drops, in an effort to tell everyone throughout Berlin the truth of what was happening. But the risk of being discovered had been too great, especially when the SS were so ruthless at unearthing those who weren't loyal.

‘I thought you might like this,' Ethan said, appearing in the doorway with two slices of bread covered in jam. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of it. ‘There is something to be typed tonight.'

‘Thank you,' she said, carefully taking the food from him. The last thing she needed was to get sticky, jammy fingers on the paper, especially when it was the first day there'd been something for her to do. ‘I thought jam was almost impossible to get these days?'

‘It is,' he replied, ‘unless you own a grocer's and keep enough hidden to last for years.'

They both laughed, and Eliana was reminded again how easy she found it to be around him.

‘Apparently there are stocks of all sorts of luxury items for the high-ranked officers and their families,' he said. ‘Coffee, jam, chocolate... everything you can think of.'

Eliana finished chewing her mouthful and looked up at him. ‘It's true, what you've heard,' she said. ‘I've been hidden somewhere, so life has been very bleak, but we had the best food we could wish for. The family helping me seemed to have access to everything they needed.'

‘And you trusted them?' Ethan asked. ‘If they were eating like kings, I can only guess what their involvement in the party is.'

‘We had no choice but to trust them. But honestly, I think they're different.'

‘Or they're trying to ease their conscience by helping one family and pretending they're not monsters like everyone else?'

Eliana looked up at him, suddenly losing her appetite as she digested his words.

‘I'm sorry, I should never have said that. Please forgive me.'

‘No,' she said, setting the slice of bread down on the plate. ‘You should have said it. You don't have to hold your tongue around me, I appreciate your honesty.' Even if that honesty is hard to swallow.

Ethan leaned against the doorframe, his eyes darting away before coming back to meet hers. ‘Well, I should have at least waited until you'd finished eating, so I didn't put you off your food.'

Eliana grinned back at him, shaking her head. He was impossible not to laugh at, or laugh with in this case, and she appreciated his efforts to make light of what was an awful situation.

‘So, other than jam, tell me what you miss the most, from your life before,' Ethan said.

She loved that he'd swiftly changed the topic away from the Müllers. ‘I don't even know where to start. My mother's roast chicken, or her latkes, or her matzo ball soup.' She sighed. ‘And sweets. I keep dreaming of ice creams or chocolate, but mostly just ice cream.'

Ethan groaned. ‘I keep thinking about my mother's pork cutlets. I think I could eat them every night for the rest of my life.'

‘Do you ever think about what we'd be doing, if the war hadn't happened?' she asked.

‘You mean do I think about all the dances, all the long summer days swimming in the lake, all the films we'd be watching?'

Eliana watched him, seeing that he missed it all just as much as she did, even though he'd been afforded a freedom throughout the war that she hadn't. She hadn't thought about dancing in a long time, but now that he'd mentioned it, dancing was something she missed deeply, too.

‘Yes,' she finally said. ‘All those things. Even just lying in the sun, reading a book and laughing with friends.'

‘Eating ice cream?' he teased.

She laughed. ‘Yes, eating ice cream. Of course.'

Ethan slid to the floor, his back against the doorframe, as they spoke. ‘Sometimes it's hard to believe how quickly things changed.'

They sat in silence for a moment, until he spoke again.

‘When there were still Jews in the city, we had to turn them away, even though they were starving. The women would stand there with their little children, begging us for food, and all we could give them was whatever was left at the end of the day. A bit of stale bread was often the best of what we had. But then we weren't even allowed to give them that.'

‘If you hadn't followed the rules, you'd have been arrested,' Eliana said, seeing the anguish on his face, the memories that clearly still haunted him. ‘You'd have filled their stomachs for one meal, and then you and your parents would have disappeared in the night.'

‘Sometimes even knowing that doesn't help, though. It doesn't make what we did any easier to accept.'

‘No, but it's the life we've been forced to live. And there is no black and white, good and evil. There are many people who are having to exist in the grey, just to preserve their own lives.'

They were silent for a time, with Ethan keeping watch as she finished her bread and then dusted her hands together to rid them of any breadcrumbs. Then she set up her workstation, using an apple box as her makeshift desk, positioning her typewriter and sitting cross-legged on the floor. She had a sack beneath her, but the cold still managed to leach through to her bones, making her shiver almost instantly.

‘I almost forgot to give you this,' Ethan said, standing up and slipping a piece of paper from his pocket.

The note had been passed to Ethan at some stage during the day, tucked inside a ration book, which meant that there was something important to share with the network. She'd been told she could go weeks without having to type anything, so this meant something was happening.

‘I think they're planning something that could end it all,' he said, when she looked up.

‘What sort of something?' she asked.

He shrugged and went back to his position by the door, to keep a lookout. ‘I don't know. But there seems to be a lot more activity than usual, and someone said that Noah was back.'

‘Who's Noah?'

‘He's been instrumental in our entire network from the very beginning, but I don't know him personally.'

She nodded and placed the piece of paper to her left so she could begin typing. But before she did, she looked up and smiled at Ethan, who was still watching her.

‘One day we'll be dancing again, Eliana. One day you'll be able to eat ice cream every day if you so desire.'

She imagined meeting him at a different time, wondered whether perhaps he might have invited her to one of those dances. ‘I certainly hope you're right.'

Ethan held her gaze for a moment before looking away, staring out of the door to make certain that no one was coming. They had a plan whereby she would hide the typewriter and put any paper into a sack if someone came, before the two of them would lie down on top of it and pretend to be two young lovers, caught kissing. The theory was that no one searching would think to ask them to stand up, but she wasn't so sure it was a fail-safe plan.

Eliana smiled to herself as she began typing. It might not be fail-safe, but I wouldn't mind an excuse to cuddle up to Ethan.

Two hours later, when Eliana had finished typing, she stretched and indicated to Ethan that she was done. Because they didn't have a printing press, she had to type multiple copies of each page, and by the end of it her fingers were aching and her back was sore.

She left the stack on the apple crate, thankful when Ethan came to lift the heavy typewriter for her. They both hid it, and when they went to stand, she could see that his back was as stiff as hers from sitting in the doorway.

‘I think we deserve a cup of tea and something hot to eat,' he announced, taking out a sack and filling it with the papers for his father to come and collect later. ‘Would you like to come back to the house with me?'

Eliana hesitated. If she'd had her own parents to go home to, she knew she would have declined, knowing she needed their approval first. And that very fact stopped her now, thinking of them still locked away in the stuffy attic. She wanted to behave in a way that they would approve of.

‘I would love to, but I'm so tired,' she said. ‘Would you mind walking me home though?'

He nodded. ‘Of course.'

‘I'm so scared of the bombs,' she admitted, as she put her coat on and they walked through the dark store. Ethan checked the doors and collected his own coat, and she took his arm as they walked to the front, where he let them out on to the street. It wasn't far to walk to the Müllers' apartment, but she was grateful to have him accompanying her, especially when so many buildings had been reduced to rubble around them.

‘Ethan, earlier today, you mentioned you'd lost someone,' she said, hoping she wasn't being too nosy. She realised then that her arm was still looped through his, but she decided to leave it there, feeling safer with him close, especially in the dark. It was almost impossible not to be scared of the SS, even with papers in her pocket to prove her identity – or of bombs lighting up the sky or falling around them.

‘I lost many someones,' he said. ‘First, our teacher disappeared, and that was my first real understanding of what was going on, that people in our lives could be there one day and disappear the next. And then my uncle's wife was taken, our doctor, and then...' He took a deep breath, and for a moment she wondered if he was even going to tell her who else had gone. ‘And then my best friend.'

‘He was arrested?'

‘Rounded up with other families in our neighbourhood and loaded on to a train. I hid and watched. I knew it was dangerous but I needed to see what they were doing with him, where they were taking him. I watched him and his brothers until they disappeared from sight, and I just knew that it was the last time I'd see them.'

‘You were a member of Hitlerjugend?' she asked.

‘I was.'

‘And even so, you remained best friends with this boy? Throughout it all?'

‘His name was, is, Ezra,' Ethan said. ‘Remember our conversation earlier, about grey areas?'

She nodded.

‘Well, I didn't have a choice about being in Hitlerjugend, but I did have a choice about how I treated those around me. Even though we had to see each other secretly, so no one else saw us, he remained my best friend.'

Ethan was a rare man, she'd give him that, and it only made her like him all the more. He'd clearly been raised by good parents, kind parents; people who wouldn't accept what was going on around them, but knew they had to at least appear to play by the rules to avoid detection.

‘How have you managed to avoid being called up for service?' she asked.

Ethan's arm fell away from hers then, and she watched as he patted the breast pocket of his coat and listened to his sigh. ‘I haven't,' he said, taking something out and passing it to her.

She squinted in the almost-darkness, trying to make out what it said. But after reading the first sentence, she knew what it was.

‘Do your parents know?'

He nodded. ‘Yes.'

‘You were able to avoid being called up until now, because of the grocery store?'

‘I was. But apparently they need every man they can get now,' he said. ‘I had pneumonia as a child, and it damaged my lungs, so in the beginning that was another reason for me to stay home, because I didn't pass the medical. But now it seems they're taking any man, no matter what.'

‘I'm sorry,' she whispered, taking hold of his arm again, hating the thought of this gentle, caring man being sent to fight a battle that he didn't believe in. ‘I'm so sorry that you've managed to stay clear of the fighting for so long, only to be called up now.'

‘So am I.'

‘Who will they send to replace you in the store?'

He cleared his throat, holding her gaze. ‘You. You are my replacement, Eliana.'

She gasped. ‘Me? I'm the reason you've been called up?'

Ethan shook his head. ‘No, you are the reason my parents will have help when I'm gone. If it weren't you, it would have been someone else. My papers had already arrived.'

They walked the rest of the way to the Müllers' apartment in silence, and when they got there, Eliana turned to Ethan, blinking away tears that this beautiful man in front of her would soon be gone.

She slid her arms around him, refusing to be shy now that she knew how little time they had together, drawing him close and placing her head on his chest, closing her eyes when his arms went slowly around her. They stood like that for a long while, until she finally stepped back, looking up at him, hoping he knew what he'd come to mean to her in such a short time. Given everything that had happened to her and her family over the past few years, genuinely kind, good people had been in short supply, which made her appreciate Ethan and his family all the more.

‘You're a good man, Ethan. I feel so privileged to have met you.'

He hesitated, watching her, as if deciding what to do, before placing a warm, slow kiss on her cheek that she felt all the way down to her toes. It was as close to a first kiss as she'd ever had, and she couldn't have imagined it being better if she'd tried.

‘Goodnight, Elly,' he murmured against her skin.

‘Goodnight, Ethan.'

And with him watching, his eyes burning into her back, she ran up the steps to the door and let herself in, finding it almost impossible to wipe the smile from her face as she ducked her head down, not wanting anyone to see her. She was acutely aware that, despite her change in appearance, someone who'd known her from before might recognise her.

‘You must be the Müllers' niece!' came a shrill woman's voice that took her completely by surprise.

Eliana breathed a sigh of relief that the woman was a stranger, before glancing back to see if Ethan was still there. To her disappointment, he was already gone. She turned back to the woman standing at the foot of the stairs with a young girl whom Eliana presumed was her daughter tucked into her side. They were well dressed, with the woman wearing a thick fur coat that for some reason looked familiar to her, even though she knew that was a ridiculous thought.

‘I am,' she said, remembering the role she was to play, fixing her smile just as she'd practised in Ava's bedroom when she'd been trying on her clothes and preparing to become someone else. ‘I'm very fortunate to be staying with them, although I have to say that I'm still getting used to the air raids here.'

The woman was smiling brightly, but Eliana felt like she was about to be interrogated.

‘I don't think any of us will ever get used to those. But remind me, your parents are...'

Eliana held her smile, as difficult as it was, trying to push away the fear that was rising inside of her. ‘My father is an officer, posted outside of Germany, and my mother...' She looked away and cleared her throat, finding it particularly easy to make tears form in her eyes. After so much loss, it wasn't hard to find something sad to fixate on. ‘My mother was killed by an American bomb. I wasn't home, and I came back to find our house destroyed and my mother—'

‘Oh dear, please, you don't need to continue,' the woman said, holding her hand to her heart and then rushing forward to engulf Eliana in an awkward hug. ‘I didn't realise you'd suffered so much loss, and your poor father, losing his wife when he's away bravely leading our soldiers.'

It was a lie of course, but this woman had likely already heard all of this before and was simply trying to see if her story matched up, to make certain that Eliana was who they said she was. From what Hanna had told her, everyone was suspicious of everyone else now, trying to find fault, trying to find traces of a lineage that wasn't pure enough, their terror at someone having Jewish blood at fever pitch.

Eliana nodded, dabbing at her eyes with the backs of her fingers. ‘Thank you. Everyone has been very kind, but especially my aunt and uncle. I don't know what I'd have done without them, and I know it's been a great comfort to my father too, knowing he doesn't have to worry about me.'

‘I haven't seen your aunt recently. She's not staying here?'

Eliana could tell how insincere this woman was. She'd switched from concern over Eliana's mother to questioning her about Frau Müller, barely pausing for breath. If it had been any other time, Eliana wouldn't have given her the time of day, and she certainly wouldn't be letting her interrogate her so brazenly.

‘She's staying at their country house. My uncle likes to return home there and know she's safe, and my cousins would be there, too, if they didn't have such important work to do in the city.'

The little girl peered out from behind her mother then, and that was when Eliana realised what she was wearing. It was the Jungm?delbund uniform. Of course, children as young as ten were being indoctrinated now, to ensure they hated Jews and everyone else who wasn't part of the ‘master race', when they were barely old enough to think for themselves. Eliana wondered if this little girl already had such hate running through her blood and her mind. These children had never been around Jewish boys and girls – it was probably impossible for them to imagine a mixing of religions and cultures.

‘Well, we must let you get home, sorry to keep you,' the woman said. ‘It was just such a wonderful coincidence to run into you like this, especially after hearing all about you from your uncle.'

Eliana began to walk up the stairs, not realising they were on their way up, too. She'd expected them to be leaving, which now that she thought about it didn't make sense at all given the hour.

‘You're here to visit the Müllers?' Eliana asked, glancing at the girl again, who appeared to be studying her intently.

‘Oh no, we moved into the apartment upstairs over Christmas,' the woman said. ‘You should see it, it's absolutely stunning, and we have the most beautiful art! Some days I can't stop staring at it all, I have to pinch myself that it's all ours. And look at this coat! Would you believe I found it hanging in the wardrobe for me? I haven't taken it off since we arrived.'

Eliana's voice caught in her throat, her smile impossible to hold as she failed to respond, as she realised why the beautiful fur coat had seemed so familiar. What was she supposed to say to that? How was she supposed to react to this woman proudly announcing that she'd moved into an apartment that didn't belong to her, that had been Eliana's home? That still has my papa's precious artwork on the walls! That had my mama's fur coat still hanging where she left it in the wardrobe? Did these people even wonder how these homes became available? Did they ever think of the people who had lived there before them, or the lives that had been ruined? Or did they simply think that anything that had once belonged to the Jews should be redistributed among them all?

‘I – I...' She could feel her face turning red, knew that both the woman and her child were staring at her.

‘Are you all right?'

‘No,' Eliana said, shaking her head and holding her stomach, doing her best to feign illness. ‘I think something has upset my stomach, I'm feeling quite unwell.'

The woman took hold of her arm and helped her up the last few steps, and even the feel of her skin against Eliana's and the brush of her mother's coat made her want to scream, made her want to turn and grab the woman by her shoulders and shake her, to push her down the stairs and watch her tumble to the bottom. She'd never had violent thoughts before, but in that moment, she truly felt as if she were capable of murder.

But instead she fumbled for her key, her fingers shaking as she pushed it into the lock, mumbling her thanks as the woman called out behind her, trying to hold the facade together for just a moment longer until the door was shut.

Eliana ran through the apartment to the bathroom, bile rising in her throat, burning in her mouth as she doubled over the toilet, emptying the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left. She cried as she kept being sick, as her tears fell, as pain rippled through her body.

‘Eliana?'

She heard Hanna's worried call but couldn't respond, wiping her face and falling back to her knees when she tried to stand, curling up on the cold floor tiles as her entire body trembled, as she fought not to scream.

Before she knew it, Hanna was behind her, her body moulding to Eliana's as she wrapped her arms around her and held her tight, soothing her, instinctively seeming to know that Eliana needed to be held. And then Eliana cried so hard that her stomach hurt, her cheeks ached, her heart broke. Even her bones seemed to ache with her pain.

‘They're living in our apartment. They're living my life as if it was theirs to steal.' She sobbed as she tried to breathe, gasping for air. ‘When will it ever end? When will we ever get our lives back? When will they stop taking what isn't theirs to take?'

Hanna didn't say anything, but Eliana could feel her silent tears falling against her neck, wetting her skin. She kept her arms wound tightly around her as they lay and shivered on the cold bathroom floor.

‘It has to get better,' Hanna eventually whispered. ‘It has to, Eliana. It can't be like this forever.'

Eliana closed her eyes, Hanna's arms still wrapped around her. She only wished that she could believe her.