ROSE
When Rose had first learned that Peter had died, she’d felt as if her world had ended. Darkness had engulfed her, snatched away her happiness and with it any excitement or anticipation about the future. But walking now to the little memorial she’d made, her tears were replaced by a smile, the sadness she’d carried all those years barely a whisper against her skin. Just as her time in prison, the pain and suffering she’d endured before being rescued and finally sent home, was like a silent murmur in her mind that she was mostly able to ignore.
She smiled when she looked down at the little girl whose hand she was holding. Her little girl. Coming home to find that her brother and sister-in-law had both been killed hadn’t surprised her, not given their work with the Resistance. But finding out they’d had a daughter and that Charlotte had given birth and smuggled her back to Paris, that she’d found Maria and begged Rose’s old maid to keep her safe? That she and Charlotte must have been pregnant at the same time without her knowing? That had been the biggest surprise of her life. And Francesca was like the daughter she’d never had, a reminder of Sebastian with her thick dark hair and even darker eyes, and Rose felt like she now had something, someone, to live for.
She’d been holding Francesca’s hand, the little girl happy to toddle along beside her, stopping a hundred times or more to touch a blade of grass or admire a bird in a tree, or sometimes even to pick a flower. Nothing had ever felt more special than having her palm clasped to Francesca’s, her wonder at everything giving Rose a new perspective on the world through the eyes of a toddler.
When she shut her eyes, now she saw a future: Francesca as a beautiful young woman, love and laughter, grandchildren even. She would have done anything to have Peter by her side, and her brother, but nothing could bring them back from the dead.
‘Will you blow Uncle Peter a kiss for me?’ she asked, bending low and pressing a kiss to Francesca’s soft little cheek.
She received a big kiss in return instead, and Francesca clamped her hands to Rose’s face, forcing her to look at her when she stared into her eyes. It was the kind of spontaneity that took Rose by surprise every day, made her smile when she least expected it.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ she whispered.
Francesca was frowning, but when Rose dropped a wet kiss to her nose and laughed, the frown disappeared.
‘I’m not sad, just missing Uncle Peter.’
Today would have been his birthday. If he’d been alive they would have started the day in bed, eating breakfast and planning their day. Peter had always taken the day off work on his birthday and hers, the only days that he cleared his schedule and refused to go to his office or talk business even for a moment. They would indulge, eat, make love and laugh. It was always one of Rose’s favourite days of the year, and it was the one date that was always hard for her to pull through now. Without Francesca she’d have buried her head under her pillow and refused to rise until the day had passed.
‘Come on, darling,’ she said, standing and taking Francesca’s hand once more. ‘Let’s say our prayers and then go back home. We have our visitors coming soon.’
Rose had buried a tiny box of Peter’s things beneath a beautiful oak tree before she’d left Paris for the coast, in one of her favourite places to walk, since she had no remains of his to lay to rest. She’d planned to put down a plaque, something special so anyone passing could read it, to keep him living on and to give her something to reflect upon. But she realised now that the old pocket watch he’d inherited from his grandfather and his favourite silk handkerchief resting beneath the earth was enough. She was carrying a flower, and when they reached the tree she bent low to place it at the juncture where the trunk met the ground.
‘I’ll never forget you, my darling. Not for as long as I live.’
Francesca tugged at her hand, loosening their grip, and Rose let her go. She could toddle off for a little bit; this was a moment in time that Rose needed, just a minute or two until next year.
‘Thank you for loving me. Thank you for believing in me and always letting me be myself, challenging you when most wives would have agreed with anything their husband said. No man will ever live up to the memory I have of you.’ She brushed tears from her cheeks as she smiled and touched her palm to the tree. She held it there, feeling the energy from the oak that stretched so high up into the air.
‘I hope you are free and watching over me, seeing me with little Francesca. She is a breath of fresh air, and everything I imagined our own child would be like. If Sebastian has found his way to you, and Charlotte, make sure they know how loved she is. She will never want for anything in her life, and I love her as fiercely as I loved you.’
Rose felt a tug at her leg and saw Francesca was back, holding on tight to her, wanting to be picked up.
‘Happy birthday, Peter,’ Rose whispered, pushing off from the tree with her hand and stepping back.
She scooped up her little girl and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, dark curls all messy from an afternoon of play.
‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go.’
She loved the weight of Francesca in her arms, the smiles and the affectionate looks and touches. It had warmed her heart, and every day with her made her realise how important every sacrifice had been, why every life they’d lost in the field had been for something greater. They’d fought for freedom, for all the children out there who deserved a safe and free world to grow up in. It had been a huge price to pay, but one day she hoped Francesca and all the other children in France would listen to their mothers, aunts and grandmothers tell stories about the war and understand just how much they’d given up for them.
‘Are you looking forward to meeting Auntie Sophia and Auntie Hazel?’ she asked Francesca. ‘I bet they’ll love meeting you!’
By the afternoon they’d be together again, the first time seeing one another since they’d been separated, and she couldn’t wait. They would always have a special bond, a shared understanding of what they’d endured. Without them she might be reflecting on the past and wondering if she’d dreamed up the whole thing – that’s how unlikely it was that three women from three very different backgrounds had ended up wielding guns and knives and getting some of the most important messages out of and into France during what she was certain would be remembered as the bloodiest and most sacrificial war ever known to man.
And what she’d shared with each of her friends – with Sophia that night she’d lost the baby she’d been so desperate for, and the nights huddled with Hazel in the German prison, so close to death – would never leave her. They were a part of her soul, the memories engraved into her very being, and she would love those two women like sisters for the rest of her life.