he would have been during the war, in his thirties.
Alex riffled through a few more of the files and pulled out a couple of black-and-white photos of Marcus, and Sophie realised Alex had the same fair hair and piercing eyes. Their build was very different. But it was obvious they were related.
‘We look a little alike, you see,’ he stated then, reading her mind. ‘My grandmother, Amy, lost her fiancé during the war, though she was already pregnant with my mother, and my mother never married either, or rather, not until I had already grown up. Which is why I am a Vonstein. She found love with my stepfather, who owned a cheese factory and did very well for himself, and she was glad to finally change her name.’
Sophie was drawn to a photo of Marcus standing in a vineyard with a man of similar build and two young women, one fair, one with dark hair, her head thrown back, caught in the midst of laughter with a young child gathered in her arms. She turned over the photo and on the back were the words ‘Marcus, Amy, Marcel, Essie and Amélie’ scribbled in pencil.
Alex caught what she was looking at. ‘That is Marcus, with his sister Amy, my grandmother, his brother Marcel and sister-in-law Essie. Before they were killed.’
Sophie stared at the picture of the young child in her mother’s arms, about the same age as Emily when she died.
Sophie froze. ‘Killed?’
Alex nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘During the war. Marcus’s sister-in-law was Jewish.’
A sob caught in Sophie’s throat. ‘The baby too?’
Alex’s eyes met hers and it was if he didn’t want to answer, understanding the personal impact for her. But she already knew what he’d say.
Sophie put down the photograph and stared at the young child again, so innocent, so happy, and the wave of grief that was always just under the surface found its way to her throat. She swallowed it down.
Searching through more of the documents, Alex eventually came across Marcus’s death certificate. It stated that he had died on June the tenth, four days after the Normandy landings, and Sophie wondered if Vivienne had still been with him at that time. They’d never recovered a death certificate for her. It was as if she just disappeared.
Sophie stared at the picture of Marcus and his family smiling in the vineyard, and suddenly he seemed very human, a real person, so different from what she had imagined.
25
1944
Vivi didn’t sleep at all after discovering her patient’s real identity. Going over and over in her mind all the things she’d told Vonstein, she wondered: How had she been so foolish? She was trained to be guarded with her words no matter what, and here she was, offering all the facts about the Resistance that he’d wanted. Her only hope was that he would spend the rest of the war as a detainee of His Majesty’s government and never get back to France.
But still she kicked herself and, worst of all – though she was loath to even admit this – she still felt attracted to him. Just the day before he’d leant forward and touched her hand and still she’d felt a thrill race through her body. Now she despised herself for feeling anything for this man who had been undercover as a German spy. One thing she was sure about: he was very good at his job. She hadn’t suspected in the slightest that his cover story wasn’t real or that he was not French Resistance. He must have been well equipped for his mission with the intelligence he’d had.
When Vivi arrived at her duty that morning, she knew that this was the day that they were planning to start monitoring Vonstein. After they prepared the room with listening equipment, they wheeled in the new young patient and they placed him next to Vonstein. He, too, was shackled to the bed. The British officers who brought him in didn’t speak German very well, so Vivi translated for them all.
‘We have someone to keep you company. One of your expatriates came down in the North Sea and will also be a guest of our government for the rest of the war. I believe his name is Herman Schmidt.’
Vonstein nodded and eyed the other man distrustfully, though by the next day, it was as though they were the best of friends. They talked about their life before the war in Germany, the food they were both missing, and the type of