We'll Meet Again by Lily Baxter

Author:Lily Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407088549
Publisher: Random House

CHAPTER TWELVE

New Year began with a Red Cross message from Muriel, proudly announcing the birth of twin daughters to Adele and Frank. Meg was delighted at the thought of being an aunt, but it was difficult to get excited over an event that was so far removed from the drudgery and the rigours of their daily lives that it seemed almost unreal. She sat at her father’s bedside while they composed the few precious lines allotted to them for a reply, although it would, of course, be heavily censored. They sent congratulations to Adele and Frank, adding that they were all in good health and being well treated. Meg hoped that her mother would not read between the lines.

She lived in constant fear that David would break the habit of a lifetime and communicate with them, but thankfully he remained his usual unreliable self. It would have been difficult to explain to the authorities how David Colivet could be in two places at the same time, and Meg could only be grateful to her brother for being thoughtless and utterly self-centred. She could imagine him blissfully unaware of his family’s plight while he lived day to day, playing the hero, which he undoubtedly was. She said a prayer for him every night, and hoped that he never changed.

The bitter January days dragged on and the increasing scarcity of food and fuel simplified their existence to a daily struggle for survival. Meg saw very little of Rayner and they were never alone for long enough to do more than exchange a brusque greeting. Sometimes she thought she had imagined their conversation on Christmas Day and she would fall asleep at night with the pearls around her neck, waking early to tuck the necklace safely away in its box beneath the mattress at the start of another back-breaking day.

Pip’s crystal set kept them in touch with news of the German surrender in Stalingrad and at the end of January they heard of the first daylight bombing of Berlin by the RAF, but it was becoming increasingly dangerous to use the radio and Pip was almost caught with it on several occasions.

At the beginning of February it was as if Grulich’s ghost had come to haunt them in the shape of Lieutenant Nordhausen, who had been sent as a replacement for an officer who had become ill and been repatriated to Germany. Rayner was kept busy with duties overseeing the construction of gun emplacements at Jerbourg Point, and Nordhausen seemed determined to earn his promotion by spying on the family and finding fault with everything they said or did.

One bitterly cold evening in late February, Meg had just come in from the fields where she had been helping Gerald to bring the cows into the barn. The constant threat of escaped slave workers stealing food and even milking the cows made it necessary to lock the animals in at night. It had been a long, gruelling day and she had had almost nothing to eat; she was cold, exhausted and faint from hunger.

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