He took time to respond to her. ‘It has not exactly been the most edifying day for my family, either. Bad enough that my great-uncle was a Nazi. Now I know that he murdered women in cold blood, it’s hardly going to help my cause very much. I was so hoping to take good news to my mother, something positive.’
‘I think I’m going to lie down for a while,’ Sophie decided, finishing her coffee and making her way to the hotel. She was grateful they hadn’t got a room together so she could gather her thoughts. She tried to use the analytical part of her brain to pull all the pieces together and create a different conclusion, but everything pointed to one thing: Marcus had killed Vivienne. But why, if Vivienne was really a Nazi? Just because she made a mistake?
Meanwhile, Sophie knew she wasn’t being totally fair to Alex, but she needed time to think about all this, so she texted him to say she would eat in her room that night, and after a light dinner, she fell asleep in her clothes at around nine o’clock.
She woke up in the middle of the night freezing and changed into her pyjamas, then crawled under the cool sheets. Why had she stopped feeling anything for Alex? Her heart felt numb and cold. Was she being cowardly? Or was she looking for a way out, fearful because of what had happened with Matt, not wanting to move on from her grief?
Sophie tried to keep things in perspective. She would visit Vivienne’s grave out of respect tomorrow, and then go home to London. Had she only been away for a little more than a week? It felt like her real life was an eternity away. She closed her eyes, thinking of her flat and her cat, and it brought back feelings of warmth to her. That’s what she would do. She would go home and file Alex away as a holiday romance. A fling. A need to move on after Matt. Hopefully it wouldn’t hurt him too much. She had so much going on inside her, she couldn’t possibly contemplate a relationship right now. These thoughts settled her as she went to sleep.
The next morning Sophie felt clearer than she had for days. She dressed and texted Alex to ask him to meet her downstairs for breakfast. When he came down and met her twenty minutes later, it was apparent he had just got out of the shower. He smelled fresh, his blond hair damp and tousled, his blue eyes showing concern.
‘How did you sleep?’
‘Like a log,’ she stated. ‘Yesterday was so hard. I guess my body just needed a good rest.’
Alex sat down, and she noticed he didn’t reach for her hand or hug her or even offer the customary kiss on both cheeks. He was being careful, probably allowing her to dictate their interaction. He had obviously given some thought to their relationship after what she’d told him the day before.
‘Sophie, I want you to know, I understood what you said yesterday, and I think we both have a lot of emotions going on right now. I think you’re correct that we must slow down and take things gradually, and I think you are right that we shouldn’t pursue something between us at the moment. We both need time. But let’s at least finish everything we’re doing here,’ he continued, ‘and see where we are after that.’
Sophie nodded as a waitress approached the table and took his order. When her eggs arrived, she found that she wasn’t hungry and pushed them around her plate.
‘So, do we need to go back to the records place to locate the graves?’ she asked.
He nodded as he scooped a spoonful of his boiled egg. If anything, he seemed more relieved by their clarifying conversation than she did.
They finished their breakfast and made their way in the taxi. On the journey, they made casual conversation about Germany and the weather and the hotel they were staying in. Sophie wondered, at that moment, if it was over. She despised the way her heart felt conflicted. She wasn’t sure she wanted this. But she couldn’t believe that just over a week ago she’d still thought she was in love with Matt. These feelings that had come upon her so quickly had overwhelmed her, while also reminding her that there were other people out there, people who she might be able to feel something for again one day.
Sophie looked across at Alex, who was staring out of the other window, and enjoyed being with him. It was not just the attraction she’d had, but how comfortable she felt around him. He was so warm, so attentive, so different to Matt.
They arrived at the records office and it didn’t take long for them to track down the cemeteries where both Vivienne and Marcus were buried. With a shudder, they realised it was the same one in Normandy.
Later that morning they flew straight to Normandy and hired a car to drive to the cemetery. Years before, all the German soldiers had been moved from the many graves that they had been placed in around France during the war years to this location for ease of visitors looking for their relatives.
Sophie bought flowers on the way from the airport, and when they arrived, her whole body shook with the experience. She had not considered how much all of this would affect her, her mind going back to burying her mother and her darling daughter such a short time before. Seeing her struggling, Alex put a reassuring arm around her, and she allowed him to comfort her as they found their way down the gravel path to the rows and rows of white crosses that stretched in long lines as far as her eye could see. Someone had given them a number at the gate, and they had to count along the rows until they found the correct one.
When they got there, she moved to stand in front of the tiny cross. It seemed so simple and plain. With tears running down her cheeks, she stared out at all the crosses and thought about all the stories of people’s lives that lay beneath them. With her hand still trembling, she laid the flowers on Vivienne’s grave.
‘Dear Vivienne, I don’t know all of your story, but I’m sorry for how you died.’
She thought again about the phrase ‘remember the swallows’. What could it have meant?
After they visited Vivienne’s grave, they also found Marcus’s cross, and they stood before it. She felt overwhelmed as tears continued to slide down her cheeks. Tears for the great-aunt she had never known, and tears for a war that had created both monsters and heroes at the same time.
‘I feel guilty,’ said Alex, looking down at the cross. ‘I have done nothing wrong, and yet I feel guilty. I don’t know how to put this right.’
She reached out and took his hand in her own. ‘If nothing else good comes out of this, at least we will have met each other.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘As friends,’ she reiterated.
As they departed the cemetery, they were both thoughtful. They travelled to their hotel in silence, and when they arrived, they talked about the next step.
‘We can get a flight back to Paris in the morning if you wish,’ he suggested.
She nodded. ‘I think tomorrow would be good. But I will fly straight back home to England.’
Sophie had already decided not to say anything to her family about what she had found out; it was better they not know the truth. That, in all likelihood, everyone had been right. Sophie had not been able to prove Vivi hadn’t been a Nazi and now she knew that, even worse, she had been executed at the hands of the man who she had loved, and who had deceived her.
A man who looked so like the man standing in front of Sophie right now.
40
The next morning both she and Alex took early flights, he to Paris, she to London. She would pick up her car in Cornwall at a later date, knowing she would have to go down and tell her family what she had found out sooner rather than later. She decided to spare them Vivi’s painful death at the hand of the Nazi she loved, who had betrayed her.