SOPHIA
Sophia’s face was hurting from smiling so much. It had been a difficult choice deciding to come, but she was pleased she had, and that it was just the three of them. And she was also pleased to have been able to whisper to Rose that she’d seen Sebastian, that she’d been in his presence before he’d been killed. She’d wanted to tell her but never known how, not wanting to write it in a letter and . . . She sighed. She was just pleased she’d finally said the words she’d been needing to say to her. She also understood now what he’d meant when he’d spoken of his wife having to return to Paris for family matters.
‘It’s hard to believe we’re all here, isn’t it? I mean, who would have thought we’d all make it?’
Rose and Hazel laughed, holding up their glasses, and Sophia did the same before taking a long, sweet sip of champagne. Only between the three of them could they ever laugh or even smile about what they’d been through.
‘I’ve been hesitant to mention it, but you’re wearing a ring,’ Rose said. ‘Dare I ask if you found your Alex?’
Sophia’s neck warmed and the heat rose all the way to her cheeks. It was ridiculous blushing when she had nothing to be embarrassed about with her friends, but something about falling in love with Alex all over again made her feel like a lovesick teenager.
‘I did,’ she said quietly. ‘I returned to Berlin to find him, and three weeks later he met me just like we’d always planned.’
Rose’s smile told her how pleased her friend was for her, but it was Hazel leaning in and waiting for more. They might not have been best friends immediately, but she couldn’t feel any closer to Hazel now if she tried.
‘Tell us,’ Hazel said. ‘I want every last detail!’
Sophia took a little sip of champagne, smiling to herself when she thought about that day. After recovering enough to travel to London, she’d stayed there until the war had ended. As soon as she was able she’d returned to Berlin, anxious to find news of Alex.
‘I never believed I’d find him,’ she said quietly. ‘We’d planned to meet outside a church near my old apartment. I was so scared of being back there after everything that had happened and what we’d done, but I also had this feeling that I wanted to see the Germany I’d loved as a child. And I desperately wanted to find Alex if he was still alive.’ She cleared her throat, emotional as she relived the events. ‘Only, the Berlin I remembered was gone. It was in ruins. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting to see the city like that.’
Rose and Hazel were watching her closely, hanging off her every word, and she smiled as she remembered the moment she’d finally crossed paths with him again. She would tell them some of it, but some parts were for her and Alex alone.
She looked around, the wind slapping at her cheeks. She’d sat too long. When she’d told Alex that she’d never forget him and never give up on seeing him again, she’d meant it. He was the love of her life and he always had been, and if she had to sit here all day for the next three months waiting, then she would. But the not knowing was heartbreaking, as was the devastating thought that he was gone and she had no idea, that he’d been reduced to ashes and yet she sat every day waiting to see his smiling face.
She’d told him that one day, when she returned to Berlin, she would wait every day from noon to late afternoon, for two months. What she hadn’t anticipated was how very long that was, how long each minute felt, the hours passing by as an almost impossible stretch of time.
Sophia stood, her mind miles away. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to think about her mother, the memories long buried to make way for happier ones from her childhood. But being back in Germany had brought everything flooding back, waves of memories and sadness hitting her like a gale-force wind to the chest. And her father . . . She shook her head and started to walk, as if the action itself would rid her mind of him. If she saw him now, or any of the Nazis she’d known and hated, she would simply cross the street and ignore him. If she didn’t do that she’d probably murder him. The thought had crossed her mind, making him pay for what he’d done to her beautiful mother, to the wife who’d been so loving and loyal to him, the woman he should have done anything to protect.
‘Sophia!’
Sophia stopped, every thought she’d been turning over in her mind falling away. Had she imagined someone calling her name?
‘Sophia!’
She slowly turned, eyes shut, not wanting to get her hopes up, to believe that . . .
‘Sophia!’
‘Alex?’ she whispered, his name barely leaving her lips. She opened her eyes, heart full of hope. And then she saw him. ‘Alex!’
Sophia ran faster than she’d ever moved in her life. She sprinted towards him, eyes locked on the man’s frame as he moved towards her. His hair was too long, his cheeks brushed with stubble, but she knew it was Alex. She would never forget the way he moved, his height, the way his smile stretched his cheeks wide.
‘Sophia!’
His arms opened as she ran into him, screaming as she thumped hard against his chest, holding on to him tight.
‘Oh, Sophia, I can’t believe it’s you.’
‘I’ve waited every day,’ she sobbed into his chest, ‘for three weeks I’ve been here. Waiting for you.’
She couldn’t let go, couldn’t take her hands off the man she’d fought so hard to protect and spent so long away from. She’d thought it would be awkward, that he might be nothing like she remembered, that she’d perhaps imagined how she truly felt about him. But how wrong she’d been.
Alex put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back a little, staring down into her eyes. His vibrant green-brown irises were dancing. His face was gaunt, cheekbones hollow, but his happiness at seeing her was written all over his face.
‘It’s taken me a long time to get back to you,’ he said, stroking her cheek with his thumb and slowly lowering his face to hers. ‘But I kept imagining this.’
He brushed his lips against hers, his touch so soft as their mouths moved slowly, softly together. Sophia sighed into him, kissing him back, her arms still looped around his neck. She could have kissed him all day, was lost in his touch, amazed by the years that had separated them and how it now felt as if they’d never spent a day apart.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she murmured when he finally pulled away, his mouth still so close that she could feel his breath against her skin. ‘I thought you were dead, I thought I was never going to see you again.’
‘You look beautiful, just as I remembered you,’ he said, his mouth covering hers again, hands at her waist.
‘How did you get back? What happened to you?’ She sighed and placed her cheek to his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart, feeling him breathe.
‘Can we go somewhere safe?’ he asked quietly. ‘I don’t like being here in the open.’
She nodded and reluctantly lifted her head. It must be surreal for him to be here, out on the streets of a city that had taken everything from him, a city that had held him hostage in her apartment because of its hatred for who and what he was. She’d fought for him, but she’d never come close to understanding how he felt.
‘I have a room, the place where I’ve been staying. We’ll be fine there.’
She held his hand tight and smiled up at him. It had been such a long time, and yet now it felt as if they’d never been apart. They walked in silence, through the ruined streets like they had never been able to do as adults together, hands clasped together. Sophia was no longer fearful, prepared to spit on the cobbled stones at any Nazi she knew and passed, but she didn’t want to live with so much hatred bubbling inside of her, and she knew that Alex wouldn’t, either. He’d lived with it long enough.
‘Sophia, I need you to know that I can’t stay here. I can’t be back here,’ Alex said in a low, quiet voice.
She gripped his hand even tighter. ‘I know.’ The possibility of staying in Germany, of seeing her country become great again, had seemed real only moments earlier. But now she was with him, she knew how childish the thought had been. Besides, she’d made peace with being French, and she didn’t mind staying that way.
‘Come,’ she said as she led him down a street. She was staying in a lovely little hotel, and she’d advised the owner that her husband might be joining her when he returned. She doubted Alex would mind the little lie if it meant being together.
Soon the house came into view, and she kept hold of Alex’s hand as she led him inside. There was no one about, and she took him upstairs with her. Perhaps she should have tried to go back to her own apartment, but her father had owned it and she didn’t want to run the risk of finding him there, or of the awful memories flooding back when she set foot in there again.
‘Here,’ she said, shutting the door behind them. ‘We’ll be comfortable here for the night.’
Alex smiled and she laughed at him, suddenly self-conscious. His eyes travelled up and then down her body, before he met her gaze once more. She raised an eyebrow, heart pounding as he took a step towards her, not saying a word. Sophia’s fingers fumbled on her jacket buttons, but as she took that off, Alex shrugged off his own coat. She watched, mouth dry as he then undid the buttons on his shirt and peeled that off, before kicking off his boots. He was so thin she could barely believe it, his bones jutting out but his muscles lean, as if he’d been doing something to keep himself strong. She almost didn’t want to know, hated the thought of him being hurt, abused and starved.
She pushed the thoughts away and kept her eyes on him as they stripped down.
‘Come here,’ he commanded, voice as rough as gravel.
She gulped and walked one step forward with only her slip and undergarments on. Alex reached for her, ran his fingers over her shoulders and then down her arms, the pads of his fingers soft to her skin. She gasped when he ran his fingers back up her middle, skimming her stomach before taking her slip off her as she raised her arms.
His fingers twirled over her scar, the big incision curling down her abdomen from when she’d been shot that last night before she’d been sent back to London. She looked at it and felt it often, a reminder of what she’d survived, what she’d managed to endure during her time in France. Alex glanced at her, met her gaze, but he didn’t ask questions. Instead he kept touching her, stroking her breasts. He went still, his eyes hungry, and then in one swift movement he had his arms around her and was walking her backwards, to the bed, pushing her back so she landed with a thump on the mattress. Alex’s mouth closed over hers and she kissed him like it was the last kiss they’d ever share, desperate to feel every part of him against her.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve missed this.’
She had him back. Her Alex was back. Tears filled her eyes as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, wanting him closer, wishing they could stay like this for ever.
‘I love you.’
Sophia snuggled closer to him. This was the safest and happiest she’d felt since leaving him, or perhaps since she was a child. Safe in his arms, with no war raging outside, no waiting for knocks at the door, or being found out. It was going to be a different life for them now, a life she’d never truly imagined they would ever live.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, turning on to her side, lifting her head and resting her chin on him as she stared into his eyes.
‘I’ll go anywhere but here,’ he said, breaking their gaze to look out the window. ‘I can’t . . .’
‘Shhh,’ she said, reaching to touch his face, to make him turn back to her. ‘You don’t have to explain. We can go anywhere.’
‘All I feel out there, all I see, is hatred,’ he said. ‘I can’t ever forget what they did to us, what they did to my family.’
Sophia gulped, knowing they’d need to have difficult conversations, to open the pain that would be so raw again as soon as they started to delve beneath the surface.
‘What happened to them, Alex? Are they all gone?’ she asked, her heart close to breaking for him.
‘They’re gone. Every single one of them,’ he whispered. ‘Gone like they were never here in the first place.’
Sophia breathed deep, thought of his mother, full of so much love for her family, for her son.
‘We both lost our families, Alex. You know I lost my mother, but . . .’ Sophia bit down hard on her bottom lip as it quivered. ‘My father is dead to me, too. It was his order that killed her, and if I saw him, if I had the chance to put my hands around his throat and—’
‘Sophia,’ Alex said, his thumb gentle against her shoulder as he stroked her. ‘Enough. We’ve had enough violence to last us for a lifetime, and as much as I want to kill every Nazi bastard, we’re better than that. We both are.’
He was right, of course he was right.
‘Can you tell me what you’ve been through? Where you’ve been?’
He chuckled and kept stroking her skin, lulling her, healing her with his touch.
‘Can you tell me?’
‘Do you really want to know?’ she whispered, wanting to tell him almost as desperately as she needed to keep it secret, to keep it buried inside and never let it out.
‘I know that the woman I fell in love with did things that no woman should ever be expected to do,’ he whispered, pulling her up higher so she was closer to him, so he could kiss her. ‘You might have felt like a little fish in a very, very big pond, but every life you saved, every person you shielded from harm in your apartment, will for ever remember you as their hero.’
A tear slipped down her cheek and she watched as it fell to his chest, then another and another after that.
‘I did what everyone should have done,’ she said. ‘There is nothing special about helping someone who needs it.’
Alex’s fingers thrummed across her skin. It had been so long since they’d been intimate, so long since she’d felt his fingertips on her, smelt his skin and tasted his mouth. Yet here they were, as if nothing had changed. She whispered to him some of the things she’d done, things she’d never share with anyone else, and his smile warmed her when she finished.
‘You’re quite the girl, huh?’ Alex said. ‘When I lay awake at night, wondering when I’d be found, I imagined you undercover, doing that type of work. I knew they’d never manage to stop you.’ Alex’s words were soft. ‘The Gestapo was so close to me sometimes I was sure I could feel them breathing down my neck, I’d wake with chills in the night. And yet there you were, working right beneath their noses without a second thought.’
He was wrong of course; she’d had many second thoughts, but then she’d always thought of what her mother had died for, what Alex’s family had been persecuted for, and she’d kept on going. She’d had to. And now she was fortunate to be able to talk to him about what she’d done, because he’d known the risks she was taking and the network she was part of long before she’d formally joined the Resistance.
‘Would you consider moving to Sweden with me?’ Alex asked.
Sophia kissed his chest and then wriggled further up to kiss his lips. ‘What’s it like there?’
‘Beautiful,’ he said simply. ‘It will be a beautiful place to live and raise our children. We’ll grow old there and make a new life for ourselves, a life we can be proud of in a country that has done her best to be kind to us.’
‘Children?’ she asked, trying to sound surprised. ‘Here I was thinking we were simply lovers.’
‘Very funny,’ he said, grabbing her hands and pressing a long, lingering kiss to her fingers, stirring feelings long forgotten within her. ‘There had better not be any other boyfriends you’re stringing along.’
‘Not one,’ she said truthfully. ‘I shamelessly flirted my way out of many a bad situation, but I never gave part of myself to another. I promise you that.’
His smile was crooked, and it broke her heart to see how thin his face was, as if someone had sucked all the stuffing out of it, his cheekbones pointed and face gaunt. He was still handsome, but she was looking forward to fattening him up a little.
She didn’t want to know what he’d done, who he might have been with. It was better to be oblivious, because they’d been parted a long time and the only thing that mattered now was the future.
‘I still can’t believe you survived,’ she murmured. ‘It’s a miracle.’
‘All my people,’ Alex said, shaking his head and staring away from her. ‘I don’t even know how many are left from Germany. The things they did to them, the deaths, the gas chambers, working them in those camps with no food until they starved or collapsed from exhaustion.’
‘It’s over,’ she told him. ‘We’ll never forget what they did, what they took from you and the part of my soul I had to give to survive, but it’s over. It’s time for us to rebuild our lives, wherever you need that to be. So long as we’re together, we’ll make it.’
‘So will you marry me?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said without hesitation. ‘I think we should find someone to marry us at once, tomorrow even. What do you say?’
‘I say that I can’t wait for you to be my wife.’ Alex’s voice was husky and she felt emotion clawing at her throat. ‘I’ve waited all this time to say that. All these years.’
‘I’d do it all again,’ she whispered through her tears. ‘To save you, to do what I did, I’d do it all again if I had to, just to get to this moment.’
He looked deep into her eyes. ‘I don’t have anything to give you, Sophia. Nothing.’
‘I only need you,’ she whispered back. ‘You’re enough for me, and I have enough for both of us.’
His eyebrows drew together, making her laugh. ‘What do you mean? Your father isn’t . . .’
She held up her hand. ‘Don’t ever speak of him. He doesn’t exist to me,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s my mother we can thank.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Alex said, looking confused still.
‘The day I ran out of the house, the day he killed her, I took her jewellery,’ she told him. ‘I buried some of it near here without telling you, before we left that night, and I’ve already dug it up. I only sold two diamonds to help get me to London all that time ago.’
Alex grinned, then started to laugh. ‘You little fox! Here I was thinking we didn’t have a penny to rub together!’
‘I’m going to wear her diamond wedding band when we marry, and everything else we can sell to start over somewhere.’ Sophia sighed. ‘At least that way she didn’t die for nothing.’
‘I’ll never let you forget her,’ he said. ‘I’ll never let us forget any of the loved ones we lost. We mustn’t ever stop talking about them, letting their memories live on.’
‘One day, will you come back to France with me?’ she whispered, thinking how much she loved the country she’d worked in, the locals embracing them and doing all they could to help. From the moment she’d landed on their friendly soil, she’d felt right at home.
‘Of course.’
Alex leaned forward and kissed her, slowly at first and then more urgently. She ran her fingers through his hair and pushed him back, climbing on top of him and straddling his thighs. Her hair fell around his face as she kept her lips on his, kissing him and pressing herself even harder to him. There were memories pushing at the surface, always wanting to take her back to where she’d been and what she’d done, but this made all of those thoughts go away. This was what she’d been wishing for, waiting for, fighting for.
‘I love you,’ Alex whispered into her ear.
Sophia kissed him fiercely. ‘I love you, too.’
When Sophia finally finished her tale, Rose was dabbing her eyes and Hazel had tears flowing down her cheeks. But their smiles told her they were happy tears.
‘I wish you’d brought him with you,’ Rose said. ‘Perhaps next year? And if you want a proper marriage celebration, a ceremony your friends or any family can attend, you’re welcome to have it here.’
Sophia couldn’t help the smile spreading across her lips. ‘You would do that for us?’ she asked.
Rose nodded. ‘You’re like the sister I never had. You both are. And that means you’re welcome here or at my home in Brest anytime, if you can bear to go back there after what we went through.’
‘You haven’t told us about you,’ Sophia said, turning to Hazel. ‘All these hours and you haven’t mentioned John?’ Sophia found it hard to say his name, so close to slipping and saying ‘Harry’. It had been plainly obvious to her that Hazel had fallen for the dashing soldier they’d rescued, but Hazel had been engaged to another man, and she doubted her friend would have turned her back on her duty, even after all they’d been through.