all around her. And, even though they had only just become friends, she felt a connection and a kinship with Alex because of their shared family history. Whatever Vivienne and Marcus had been to one another, they had had a connection that linked her and Alex.
Sophie had discovered that the Germans did indeed keep meticulous records, but nothing had prepared her for the Deutsche Dienststelle of Military Federal Archives where the German army’s personnel records were kept. There was a vast wealth of the history of all that had taken place during the war; today’s German people believing that transparency and accuracy was a crucial part of their recovery from their feelings of historical guilt.
The serious young man who had greeted them at the desk seemed used to dealing with relatives from all over the world who wanted to put records straight, and treated them both with extreme respect and attention.
She offered him the details of her great-aunt Vivienne, and Alex gave his uncle’s serial number and name. They had a lot of the records and files online now, on their website, but the man reassured them that it wasn’t uncommon for people to want to see the evidence for themselves.
Taking them to another room, a library of documents and files, he searched for the numbers and names, pulling out the appropriate files and placing them on the table for Sophie and Alex to look through.
‘And here are the records of what your great-aunt did during that time,’ he declared, speaking to Sophie in English. ‘And where she worked for the Reich.’
Sophie started to shake as she looked through the files. She read correspondence written by Vivienne, day-to-day functions of her department during the war and the official letters she had written. It was surreal to read her aunt’s written words in a German document.
The files were decidedly plain and ordinary. Sophie didn’t know what she’d expected. Something more like a movie, she supposed, full of intrigue and innuendo. But everything she read was so matter-of-fact, different intelligence gathered and placed in a brief for people to read. More than ever, Vivienne started to feel real. Not just a phantom in a photograph at the Imperial War Museum, but a real human being.
Across the table, Sophie noticed Alex appeared frozen, his attention captured by something he was staring at and she came across to see what it was. He had opened the pages to Marcus’s war records, and the first thing on the top was a picture of Marcus in his full Nazi uniform. Once again, the resemblance shocked her. Alex looked so much like Marcus, it made her shudder. In the picture, Marcus was stood with notable senior members of the Third Reich, and seeing them all together with an inscription that stated the photo was taken after an important meeting with high command was chilling.
‘It’s still hard to believe,’ he murmured to Sophie, ‘that this is real. I know my family have told me about it my whole life, but seeing it like this really brings it all home.’
Sophie nodded, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder before returning to look through Vivienne’s files. There was a photograph of Vivienne, too. She was staring right at the camera, standing with her arms folded, looking up as if someone had just asked her a question, her chin at that undeniable Hamilton angle. And by her side was Marcus. His expression was serious, as though he was engaged in something important and they had interrupted him to take the photograph.
It was haunting, seeing them together, and as she took in her great-aunt’s pose, it struck her how relaxed she seemed. This didn’t look like a woman who had been taken to Paris under duress. If anything, this looked like a woman who was happy, content, in love, even, and she realised again that after all of this, the conclusion could point to that very first version of the story her family had always believed was true. That Vivienne had, in fact, worked for SOE and had been discharged because of her incapability, then had fallen in love with this Nazi and had smuggled him out of England, back to Paris, where they both could do the Führer’s bidding.
Sophie hated how every scrap of evidence seemed to lead her back to that conclusion. Even if Vivienne had been at SOE that day in London, it could have been for something underhanded, part of her plot to smuggle the Nazi out of