My Name is Eva An absolutely gripping and emotional historical novel - Suzanne Goldring Page 0,13

ones of the child.

‘Lieselotte,’ she whispers. ‘They called you Lotte, but you were always Liese to me.’ She kisses both of the little photos and puts one back in the biscuit tin with all the other old family pictures. Pat can wonder all she likes, but she will never tell her.

Part II

Clever and good-looking (6,3,9)

12

20 November 1943

My dearest, darling Hugh,

This letter will never leave this country, let alone my possession, so I can say whatever I like without fear of reprisals or censure. All this time, ever since that terrible day when I was told you had gone for ever, I’ve been blaming you for taking risks, cursed you for not making it back home to me, but now I know that it was not your fault. Today, I found out that you and the others were terribly betrayed.

He didn’t want to ‘spill the beans’, as he put it, but your friend Tim McNeil came to see me this afternoon. He said he’d promised you that if he managed to get back home and you didn’t make it through, then he would call on me. He’s such a sweetie and it’s a great comfort to know that you were good friends and supported each other. I told him the only thing I’m grateful for in this whole sorry business is that you weren’t captured like the others. It’s a mercy of a kind that you were shot trying to escape and were never tortured.

Tim and I met for tea at the Coventry Street Corner House. You must remember it, darling, we went there soon after they opened the Old Vienna café and we were both unsure whether we would like the Aufschnitt or other foreign delicacies on the menu, so we ordered the special salad, full of prawns, egg and ham. That was four years ago, before the war even started. I wasn’t sure if I could manage to go back to where we had once been so happy but I decided to make an effort and wore my tailored uniform, the one Mama insisted I should have made. I think she thought I’d let the family down in my regulation kit. I’m not sure what she’d think if she knew I’m down to my last pair of stockings. If I wreck these, it’ll be Bisto seams for me like everyone else!

Tim was very kind when he arrived and I told him he should eat as he appeared awfully thin and pale. I tried the Spam fritters and he had a Welsh rarebit, which looked dreadful. The cheese we’re getting now is ghastly and I think they’d mixed it with powdered egg and tried to make it more palatable with mustard.

Then things got even more ghastly when our order came, as Tim suddenly told me he believes you and the others were betrayed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’d just been waffling on about how I kept trying to console myself with the thought that you were doing important work. I said I liked to think that you and your fellows really did ‘set Europe ablaze’ as Churchill directed and that though I knew you couldn’t tell me much about your work, I knew you were excited to be really doing your bit for the war. Then I said I knew you and Tim were sent out on special missions, so he didn’t need to worry about what he might let slip.

And that was when I noticed that Tim wasn’t eating his food. He was stirring his tea, but his spoon just kept going round and round as if he was never going to stop. He looked awful, so I asked if something was wrong with his meal and suggested perhaps he should order something else and then he looked straight at me and said you and the others never got the opportunity to set Europe ablaze. He said that he and some other chaps were convinced that your last mission had been set up to fail deliberately, to mislead the Germans.

I tried to stay calm, but I couldn’t help myself. I dropped my knife and fork on my plate and made a terrible din. I felt sick and had to hold my napkin over my mouth. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. But eventually I forced myself to speak and asked him why on earth would they want a mission to fail? He said he wasn’t exactly sure, but he believes that some clever double-double-cross agent