The Rabbit Girls(20)

Actual dying and turning to ash is irrelevant now.

She is Frau Voight, nothing more than a name as Eugenia was nothing more than a number. But the uniform, the letter, it means Mum was there too.

Mum is gone. And Miriam never knew, and Dad . . . and who was Frieda?

She is all alone with her questions.

‘It’s too late,’ she says. ‘I’m too late.’ There is nothing she can do to scrabble the past back, to ask the questions, to understand, to really know them. Because this . . . this dress, changes everything; every memory and everything she thought she knew has fallen away.

There comes a bang at the door and a voice she knows.

‘Miriam,’ the voice calls, and on stiff, cold legs she wobbles out into the hallway.

‘Hilda?’

Miriam opens the door and Hilda gently touches Miriam on the arm as she walks past and through to the bedroom. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I . . . was asleep,’ she says, following Hilda into the bedroom.

‘Of course. Your father looks rested.’ Hilda turns to her father. ‘And how are you this morning, Herr Winter. Henryk, you are looking good today.’

Miriam rubs her eyes as Hilda blunders to the bedside.

‘I’ll make you a tea? Coffee?’

‘Coffee, please.’ She opens her bag.

Miriam puts the kettle on and stands in the kitchen. When it screams and the water splashes on to the hob, she jolts to remove it, unsure how it came to boil so fast. A fragment of time, lost.

Flick. Gone.

She takes the boiled kettle off. ‘Sleep, I just need some sleep,’ she says and dabs the tea bag as it bobs around the cup.

‘Need any help?’ Hilda removes her gloves at the doorway as Miriam scoops the teabag on to the side sending an avalanche of tea over the edge too.

‘No coffee?’ Hilda asks.

‘I wasn’t thinking, sorry.’ She goes to pour the drink down the sink.

‘No problem.’ Hilda intercepts the cup and holds it with both hands. ‘All done here.’

They walk back into his room.

‘How has he been?’

‘Quiet, but okay.’ Miriam looks at his shrinking body and the bag. The dress no longer at his feet. ‘Where’s the dress?’ she says. ‘The dress that was at his feet, where is it?’

Hilda points. ‘Just there.’

Miriam rushes to the chair and lifts the dress with both hands. Holding it against her chest.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a uniform, I think.’ A shiver runs up her spine. ‘She was there too,’ Miriam says. ‘They both were. I found this . . . and a letter inside it.’

‘Is everything okay?’ Hilda asks. When Miriam doesn’t answer, she continues, ‘Why don’t you get yourself up and out today? I only have your father on my list this morning and you could . . .’ They walk into the living room, which smells of wood polish and dusty sunshine. ‘It’s a beautiful morning out there.’ Hilda opens the curtains and then the windows to prove it. The light shines into the long-forgotten room and dust floats unbidden around her.

‘I can’t leave him,’ she says. ‘I . . . I’ve missed so much. I won’t leave him again.’

Hilda sits and places a hand on Miriam’s arm. ‘They didn’t want you to know. If they had, you would have known. Here, go for a walk. It’ll clear your head.’ She warms to her idea and nods. ‘I’ll be here.’

And although every part of Miriam doesn’t want to move, she is pushed into a coat and boots and out of the door. ‘It’ll do you good. Now go,’ Hilda says. ‘We’ll be fine.’

A biting cold hits Miriam as she walks down the street. Breathing clean air, the world is waking up, and the lack of traffic means it must be a Sunday. The world keeps moving. As do her feet.

She hasn’t walked without a destination for so long, and the further she goes the more her muscles unclench. At the junction, she turns right on to Dancklemannstraβe, the classic Berliner residential buildings shine white from the morning light. All the shops and restaurants are closed and the bike racks empty. The glass-fronted buildings link to each other like a bumbling carriage. She walks past a clothing shop, an Italian restaurant, a second-hand book and vinyl shop. The residents in the apartments above remain sleepy quiet.

She walks to the beat of a train on tracks, to the beat of her heart, but her head is lost in a letter from the past.

It mentioned Gleis 17. The picture of cattle wagons in the book she saw at the library. And the footnote, Grunewald station. Where they shipped people, her parents too, no doubt, off to camps.

When she nears Lietzensee, she turns right on to Sophie-Charlotten-Straβe. She is going back to where it started. For they both survived, even if they were separated, they made it out alive in the end.

She walks to Grunewald, her breathing erratic, her heart pumping in her ears. The station is quiet as she enters the brick building, the florist closed, and for a place designed for footfall, the lack of noise rattles her. A white sign with large black letters directs her to the track. She takes a deep breath and follows it.





9





MIRIAM


The track is rusty, covered in leaves and stones. As she stands on the platform the wind roars like a living thing, grinding, whistling and softly growling through the trees. The tips of her nose and ears tingle and pulse. She waits, as though for a train from the past.