Both women jumped as a burst of laughter sounded from the floor below, which set Audrey’s heart racing.
“This is getting more and more precarious. Vogt—”
“What? What did he do? Did he say something?”
“No, but we’re not safe with them here. Their friends. God, there are eyes everywhere. We can’t sustain this much longer without being caught out.” She didn’t know, exactly, what the penalty would be for harbouring a Jew. But it didn’t really matter. If Ilse were caught, Audrey’s life would be forfeit anyway. She knew she loved Ilse more than she should; their current situation had thrust that truth to the forefront of her mind. Though she was still trying to understand what her feelings meant, the thought of anything terrible happening to Ilse was intolerable.
“We can,” Ilse said. “We have so far. I know it’s not safe, but we just have to wait a little longer.”
Audrey still hadn’t heard back from her father. His replies typically arrived within a few weeks, but who knew how the postal service might be impacted by all these new rules and systems the Nazis had implemented. She’d been checking the post daily, not just because she was anxious for news, but because she had told Vogt and Müller that her parents were dead. Also, his letter was sure to contain some reference to Ilse and the Kaplans. If the officers discovered it, the girls were finished. To be safe, she had burned all of her letters from her father and taken responsibility for checking and delivering the post to Müller and Vogt, setting their correspondence—which was occasional—beside their plates on the breakfast table.
She had mixed feelings about what her father would say. Ilse insisted on remaining in the house in case Ephraim and Ruth came back, and Audrey knew, if her father managed to sort out some way to get Ilse to London, that it was going to be a fight. Ilse was so desperately clinging to the prospect of her family’s safe return that she couldn’t see the rope was rapidly fraying beneath their fingers. Audrey had to get her out. If her father didn’t reply soon, she would write again.
“Ilse, if your mother and Ephraim do come back, what then? These men aren’t going to vacate the house just because—”
“Then we’ll all leave, go somewhere, anywhere we can. We’ll find something. Maybe your father will have a solution? Perhaps they could come with us to London.”
Audrey took a deep breath, recognizing the discussion was at an end for now. “Yes, perhaps,” she said.
They listened to the low tones of the men, who seemed to have moved to the sitting room. Glasses clinked.
“I heard you playing,” Ilse said after a pause.
“Yes. Vogt made me.”
“Ah. Well… I’m sorry. But I can’t say I mind. You know I love hearing you. What’s that other piece you’ve been playing lately?”
Audrey’s stomach jerked. “Just something of my own I’m picking away at.”
“What’s it called?”
Claus raised his voice downstairs, and Müller hushed him.
“I, er, I don’t have a name for it yet.”
“I love it.”
Audrey smiled in the darkness. “I’m glad.”
“Do you remember when Papa took us to see Peter Pan when it opened?”
Audrey did remember. That performance, along with another at the Staatsoper Opera House in Hanover around the same time, had sparked her love of music and the piano. “Yes,” she said. “What was that… eleven years ago?”
“Yes. A few months after Michael died. Papa took us to distract us, cheer us up. Mama was in a terrible state.” Audrey reached for her hand, squeezed it. “You couldn’t stop staring at the pianist. I’m not sure you took in a word of the play.”
Audrey chuckled softly. “No, I suppose not.”
“It was always one of my favourite books, you know. Peter Pan.”
Audrey lay back on the bed. “I know.”
“I always thought Peter was foolish,” Ilse said, reclining beside her. “For not wanting to grow up. Though I think he might have been right. It’s not been what I expected.”
“No,” Audrey murmured. She could feel her eyelids growing heavy. “It isn’t.”
“But then I think of little Michael. I suppose the only thing worse than growing up is the alternative. Isn’t it?”
Audrey woke with a start, Ilse still asleep next to her. She berated herself for dozing off. What if one of the men had knocked on the door, wanting something? She thought of Vogt and his many demands.
She sat up, blinking in the dark room. Ilse was breathing deeply, the curves of her frame curled into a ball, as though protecting herself even in her dreams. Audrey wanted to stay like this all night, to bask in a fantasy that things had gone back to normal, that the family was still alive and whole, the house full of love instead of the scent of Nazi boot polish and malice. Without thinking, she bent to kiss Ilse on the head, something she’d never done before.
Ilse stirred.
“You should get to the attic,” Audrey whispered.
Though half-asleep, Ilse scooted up the ladder and shut the attic door.
Through a crack in the curtains, Audrey checked her watch in the light of the streetlamp. Two thirty. She wanted to undress and crawl back into bed, but she’d missed checking the evening post after suppertime, so preoccupied she’d been with the poker night.
She crept downstairs into the dim foyer, lit only by a single lamp casting an orange glow from the sitting room. On poker nights, Müller usually went to bed around eleven thirty, Vogt around midnight. He was most often alone, but sometimes with a woman, a different one each time. Audrey was sure they were prostitutes, and loathed changing Vogt’s sheets, which stank of sweat and perfume and transactional lust.
Audrey opened the door to the telephone room, glanced at the post basket, but it was empty. Tomorrow evening, she would write again to her father.
As she turned back to the hall, she was met with a puzzled-looking Müller in his red velvet dressing gown. She jumped, held a hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. “What on earth are you doing at this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, recovering quickly. “I came down for some warm milk. And then I realized I hadn’t collected the post this evening.”
