“The stables. But I already checked there.”
“Let’s put ourselves in her shoes.” She took a step closer. “You’ve just found out that your parents are still alive and in a camp. You’re at once overwhelmed that what you’ve been dreading—that they’re dead—hasn’t happened, and yet more afraid than ever that it might be coming next. Your baby brother is gone. The cornerstones of your world are on the verge of collapse, and this would be such a massive catastrophe that you’re unsure if you’ll survive.”
“I’d want to run away and find Mama,” I said. “It would be unbearable to stay, sit still, simply waiting for more bad news.”
“Exactly,” Venetia said. “I’d want to go to her, too.”
I began to cry. It was just too much. Poor Silvie, the ridiculous horror of the choices she has to make. She must be thinking she can either stay here and possibly never see her family again, or risk her life making it back across Europe to be with them. What a decision to make!
“She’d have gone to the train station,” I muttered between sobs. “Although I’m not sure she’d know where to go, or what to do, or where to get money for the fare. She’d have to go through London, of course.” My forehead creased in thought, the nuance of a clue coming to me. “Tom!” I exclaimed. “He comes from London. She would go to him for help.”
Without another word, I turned and set off, darting straight past the wood, skirting around the edge of the orchard, and down the hill, spreading my arms open wide to balance myself, like a swallow swooping down into the valley.
As it was a Thursday afternoon and everyone would have been busy in the fields, the hop pickers’ huts were deserted, the usual bric-a-brac of prams and firewood lying dormant in the central scrub, a game of cans kicked to the side. A wind blew through. It was like a ghost town. How strange that within a few hours forty or fifty people would be back, chattering and singing, ready for the evening.
I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe she wouldn’t have come here. Looking around, I wasn’t sure I’d want to hang around. And what if Tom couldn’t help her get to London? He was only a child himself, after all.
Feeling like an intruder, I walked cautiously down the central scrub, remembering that Old George had been living there, fearful that he was still lurking around, ready to jump out at me with a knife in his hand. A sudden bang made me jump, but it was a door swinging shut in the wind, loose on its hinges. I walked over and closed it properly, just to be on the safe side.
That’s when I saw her.
Her eyes were the first thing I noticed, huge and black like a petrified mouse. Crouching at the end of the row, huddled between that and the next one, she sank lower and shifted back into the shadows, and I heard a whisk of movement before I realized that she’d escaped me, scooting off behind the huts and away into the cornfield behind. I raced after her, finding a new speed that I never knew I had, my legs shooting forward with newfound strength. Behind the huts, I found myself looking down a long avenue of grass, spying the blue skirt and a back leg vanishing behind another hut back to the central scrub.
I sprinted down and around, just in time to spot her flying across to the huts on the other side and swiftly opening a door and leaping inside, pulling it closed behind her.
I had her trapped.
Out of breath, I walked to the hut where she was hiding, then tried the door. It was locked.
“Silvie,” I said. “Open the door.”
There was no answer.
“Silvie,” I said more softly. “I want to help you.”
Still no answer.
“Silvie, please come out. I can help you get back home. I promise.”
There came a shuffle of movement, and then the metallic click of a bolt sliding over, and the door slowly creaked open, a musty smell of dirty clothes emanating from the dark interior. She sat crouched on the floor, her eyes big and red and unbearably sad.
Why should such a small girl have to go through so much grief?
I climbed into the doorway next to her and put my arm around her, and she cried great heaves of tears as she turned her face into my shoulder and wept. I looked out over the shabby scruff of land. What a miserable world to be born into.
“I need to get back to them,” she sobbed. “I must go.”
“I don’t know the best way,” I said, unsure if I should be aiding her escape, but feeling trapped as I’d promised her I would. I couldn’t imagine trying to get to Czechoslovakia. It seemed so distant and dangerous. Then it struck me, my only hope of getting her to stay would be to convince her of how hazardous the whole escapade would be. So I sat down in the doorway and pulled her down beside me. “I suppose our best bet is to go to Dover and see if we can get a boat to take us over to France.”