was sad to see many had died there. Turning the pages, she finally came upon the name of the person she thought she might be looking for and a chill ran through her body as she read it. In one of the columns were the words, ‘German POW’. She ran her finger along the line and read the name of the man that her great-aunt had apparently fallen in love. It was an interesting entry with a name she couldn’t read having been crossed out and the name Marcus Vonstein put in its place. There was another German patient that arrived after Vonstein, but he was very young, just twenty. Too young to have reached such a high rank in high command as the man Vivienne had left with, according to the newspaper article Sophie had read. She quickly scanned through the rest of the book but these POWs were the only ones entered in the ledger during the relevant 1942 to ’43 timeframe.
Vonstein had been admitted with a broken leg, multiple cuts and a head wound, nothing too serious to impair his escape with the help of a capable nurse by his side. But this information could be valuable. She scribbled it down.
As she continued to look through the attic she uncovered a box marked only with the letter ‘V’ and her heart jumped. Could this be V for Vivienne? Sophie dragged it in front of the dusty circular window at the far end of the attic and started to unpack it. There were some old clothes mostly, jumpers and skirts. She scrutinised them, trying to age them, but she wasn’t sure. There were some childhood mementos and at the bottom a stack of books. Looking through them she noted they were mainly children’s books and they were musty, with a lot of the pages stuck together, but one stood out from the rest. It wasn’t well-worn like the others, in fact it looked as if it had only ever been opened to the one page. Sophie glanced at the front – it was a poetry book by famous English poets. Handwritten inside the cover was a verse of a poem called ‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti. Sophie read it.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
Did Vivienne write it? she wondered. Sophie opened the book to the page with the corner turned down. It was a poem by Lord Byron, ‘She Walks in Beauty’. Sophie smiled – it had been one of her favourites at school. She started to read it then she noticed something. Standing up and getting closer to the window she stared at the words. It was faint, but under some of the words was a pencil mark. Sophie’s heart started to race. Could this be the poem Vivienne had memorised? She opened the front of the book. It had been published in 1943, so it had been brand new during the war and it was the only poetry book in the box. Vivienne must have bought it just to learn her code. Sophie quickly rushed to her bedroom to find the copy of the coded message she had photographed at the records building. Then sitting down at the desk in her bedroom with a pen and paper Sophie attempted to decode the message using different words in the poem, but no matter what she did nothing made any sense. She felt deflated. It was so difficult without knowing which words to use.
Sophie got up and stretched, and as she did so she knocked the book of poetry from the desk and it fell to the floor, its pages splayed out. Bending down to pick it up, something caught her attention under the book’s dust jacket, which had been knocked askew in the fall. Just under the flap she could see something else was written. Removing the cover she scrutinised the faint pencil marks. It was a list of more code words in their groups of five, written out over and over again. Then two lines in English then more lines of code. It looked as if Vivienne had been practising her coding right there under the flap of the book. The long list of letters still didn’t make any sense but Sophie moved closer