‘I’m coming,’ she called out. ‘Oui.’
Lucy was met by wide, tear-filled eyes when she finally reached the children. She dropped to her knees and gently touched the eldest girl, the one who’d called to her, on the shoulder.
Her gaze dropped to the first child lying on the ground. His leg was bleeding badly, the pain in his face heartbreaking for anyone to see. When she looked at him, his mouth open as he let out a sob, she blocked it all out; the noise, the metallic smell of blood, the gruesomeness of his wounded flesh. All she concentrated on was fixing him, assessing the situation, making a diagnosis. The doctors might be the highly trained and skilled ones, but she’d been making practical decisions and dealing with wounds since she’d arrived in Normandy that terrifying night on the beach, and she’d spent the better part of six months listening to everything the doctors around her had said. She was as capable as anyone when it came to wounds now.
Lucy looked at the bone protruding through flesh, checked to see if it was obviously broken, then she looked across at the older girl to tell her that she was going back for supplies. It was only then that she laid eyes upon the other child, another girl who had been sitting silently, almost invisible until now. Her blue eyes were brimming with unshed tears, hand to her side, pressed there tight as she stared back at Lucy.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lucy asked, knowing something wasn’t right, knowing she needed to stop and check over this child before she ran back to the truck. ‘Qu’est-ce que le problème?’ she tried.
The child slowly took her hands from her side, parting her fingers and then pulling her palms away. Lucy gasped as crimson red spread like a fast-moving cloud across the girl’s top, seeping out.
‘No!’ Lucy shouted, leaping forwards, stumbling as she frantically tried to reach her. How could anyone have gunned these children down like this? Injured them so terribly with no adults around to pose a threat? Or maybe there had been and they were dead.
‘Pressure,’ she said, unable to think of the French word for it. As she showed her what to do. ‘Hold.’
She looked behind her at the older girl, nodded with her head, but the poor child looked terrified.
Lucy thrust one hand against the child’s side and reached back for the other girl, grabbing her and tugging her forwards. She replaced her hand with the girl’s, pushing hard, showing her what to do.
‘Help!’ Lucy screamed. ‘We need help here!’ Why were the soldiers not coming over? Why was no one helping her? Why did no one else care about these poor children, alone and so terribly injured?
‘Wait,’ she said, nodding at the children. ‘I will come back. I promise.’
Lucy stood, glanced at her bloodstained hands for a moment before turning back to the army trucks. They were watching her, the soldiers standing there, the lorries in the background. She opened her mouth to yell at them, to scream that she needed more hands, that they needed to get these children out of here to safety.
She lifted one foot, about to move, wondering who had done this, whether there were SS soldiers close by or . . . Lucy stopped. She watched as one of the soldiers lifted his gun. There was a yell and then all the soldiers suddenly had their rifles cocked. What were they doing? Were they about to shoot her?
Everything moved in slow motion then, from the rising of guns to the piercing scream behind her, a blur that made her feel as if she were watching everything unfold from above. Lucy dragged her eyes from the soldiers, head turning as she looked back. A feeling of dread washed through her – empty, silent blackness taking hold as everything paused around her.
The distinctive grey-green SS uniforms caught her eye first, the cruel expression of a soldier with his gun cocked at the children she’d just fought so desperately to save. The yells from her own soldiers behind her, her mouth open as she tried to scream and instead made no noise at all.
Burning heat burst through her body. The ground vomited dirt as it flew up to meet her, a blast echoing through her ears, throwing her off her feet, making her feel as if she was caught in the centre of a tornado.
‘No!’ she screamed, the word rocketing through her mind as everything blurred. Her neck was on fire, her arm burning. She looked down, expecting to see flames, expecting to be in an actual fire, the heat was so bad.
But she didn’t see her arm. She saw blackness, blackness everywhere like a charred log from a fire, and bubbling flesh where her skin should have been. Lucy tried to sit up, tried to move, tried to speak, but nothing happened.
She forced her feet to move, clumsy, managing to rise on to all fours and move like a dog for a step or two until she fell to the ground, not even having the strength to raise her face from the dirt.
There was a loud ringing in her ears that was deafening. Lucy managed to roll over, just a little, her body heavy as lead, skin burning so hot she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. But all she managed was a guttural groan as she lay, stagnant, one eye open, smoke and debris billowing around her.
She shut her eyes, trying to push away the pain, trying to remember what it was like back in London, imagined her mother’s arms around her, whispering a song in her ear. She was in bed, a child, wrapped in a warm blanket, her mother’s body a comforting weight beside her.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Lucy smiled up at her mother as everything else went dark. She was home. She was safe. She could close her eyes now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ellie
Ellie placed a hand flat on her stomach, looking down at it. There was nothing to see, but knowing that so much was changing within her was making her so curious, and touching it made her feel more content. It gave her the feeling that she might just be able to protect this baby, if she could only make it home safe, if she could arrive back in London in one piece, go to her family, and then meet Spencer’s mother.