the hospital. Why had she assumed something different?
Alex must have sensed her thoughts because unconsciously he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s hard to take it all in, isn’t it, Sophie?’
She nodded.
All at once, Alex sucked in a breath.
‘What is it?’ Sophie asked.
He shook his head, unable to speak. He pushed the sheet of paper over to Sophie. She picked it up and started to read. It outlined how Marcus had died. Apparently he’d abandoned his post in Paris, three days after the D-Day landings, and had been shot in an alleyway by a young woman. ‘He couldn’t even be a hero for the Germans,’ said Alex, shaking his head. ‘He ran away like a rat leaving a sinking ship.’
Sophie reread the words ‘shot by a young woman’. Could it have been Vivienne? Did something go horribly wrong between them? Did she finally find her patriotism?
Sophie also shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry, Alex.’
At the bottom of the report about his death was a list of what had been gathered on his person, his uniform, and his personal effects. A ridiculous list of unimportant things, nothing that hinted at the person he was or why he had done what he had done. It was so final and chilling.
Sophie quickly looked to the end of Vivienne’s file, but there was nothing about her death. No death certificate or details of how she had died.
On the way out, the young man shook his head when she asked about that and told her that even today they were recovering records, that she should leave her email address and they would contact her if anything else came up.
She thanked him, closing the file, and they both left their details.
After they left the Federal Archives building they sat side by side in the taxi, both lost in their own thoughts. It had been a shocking and raw experience. Seeing things in black and white was very different to hearing stories. Pictures of Vivienne in her uniform with her Nazi lover and her distinctive handwriting in official files. The chance of her really being undercover for SOE was slipping out of sight.
They’d both taken photographs of what they had seen, and when they got back to the hotel and were drinking coffee, Sophie swiped through all the photos, trying to come to terms with the facts. It just overwhelmed her. Tears started to stream down her face. This was so much harder than she’d expected. Sophie hadn’t even known her great-aunt, but the sadness of what had happened, coupled with her grief, that now always seemed to lie just below the surface, was too much for her.
Alex took her in his arms then and held her tightly, apparently feeling the same pain. All at once, his lips were upon hers, and she felt this deep need to be close to him. Only Alex could understand exactly how she was feeling.
The kiss shocked her, not because it was unexpected, but by the way it made her feel. It felt right, not awkward like a first kiss, but as if she’d been kissing Alex for years. When eventually, breathlessly, she pulled away, she knew she wanted more, wanted to be even closer to him, to feel safe, even if it was for a moment. Sophie suddenly felt very far from home, and Alex was the only touchstone of comfort she had. She wasn’t sure if it was being away from all she knew or whether it was the pain and the hurt of what she was finding out.
Soon they were back in her hotel room and he stood in her doorway apologising.
‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I didn’t mean to kiss you like that.’
‘Me neither, but I’m not sorry.’
She pulled him inside the room and closed the door. Everything inside her ached to be loved. As Sophie kissed him again, she realised that she and Matt had not been this close for months. Even after Emily, he had been around but not really there for her. She’d never been a one-night stand kind of person and couldn’t even remember the last time she’d slept with someone she wasn’t in love with, but somehow, in this tiny hotel in Berlin, it just felt right.
Sophie started to kiss him more intensely. He responded in kind, obviously hungry for closeness too. And before they knew it, they were naked on her bed, making love. The first time was fast and urgent, as if they needed to work out all the hurt and