The Hidden Storyteller by Mandy Robotham

Author:Mandy Robotham [Robotham, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-11T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:

REFLECTIONS

16th February 1946

Georgie

Zofia brings breakfast on a tray the next morning, although when Georgie checks her watch, it’s already eleven a.m. She shakes herself awake, provoking a fresh wave of aches and injecting a rapid recall of the previous night.

‘We need to get out there and gauge the reaction to the riot.’ She braces the right side of her ribs with one hand and hauls herself to sitting with the other.

‘You need to stay in bed and rest,’ Zofia asserts, with a distinct matronly air. ‘I can go out and check what’s going on.’

‘But …’

‘And what happens when your body decides it won’t do what you’re asking, and you’re dragging yourself around?’ Zofia argues with fervour. ‘Your entire time in Hamburg will be wasted. You need to rest.’

Much as Georgie hates to admit, Zofia has a point. And judging by the effort it takes just to hobble to the bathroom, the diagnosis is spot on. What she can see of her ribcage is already turning a deep plum shade, and her left eye is a classic shiner, courtesy of the elbow and hitting the concrete. The gash has closed up but it’s a sorry sight. She is a sorry sight.

From experience, these injuries are obviously nothing new to Zofia. In any camp hospital, she might have tended to victims of severe beatings almost daily, alongside malnutrition and the side effects of profound cruelty. Georgie’s injuries are mild in comparison, but Zofia will know how the body needs time to heal. Aside from one bout of food poisoning, Georgie miraculously managed to dodge anything serious in the war theatre. Only Max had sustained a shrapnel wound (in the same ill-fated broken leg, as it happens), and she remembers visiting him in the field hospital for weeks, several more for rehabilitation. It was a stark warning for both of them to slow down, to be a little less gung-ho.

‘Look, you tell me what sort of things to look out for, and I will go back to the site and ask some questions, test out the people’s reactions,’ Zofia suggests. ‘Surely that’s better than nothing?’

It’s also the only option that newly appointed Matron Dreyfus will tolerate. Georgie nods, slumping back into her pillows and grateful once again that fate has planted such a worthy comrade into her path.

She spends the morning scribbling her recollections from the previous evening, the atmosphere and the rage of the people, the terror as live bullets strafed through the crowd. Was there an order to shoot from the top brass, Georgie wonders (and perhaps Major Stephens as the ranking officer), or a careless, split-second reaction from a frightened squaddie, in the face of a crowd ready to spill their wrath? There’s certain to be an investigation, but who knows if the truth will ever emerge. Chaos can do that, muddying the origin of war crimes and those responsible.

Not for the first time, Georgie questions how the world ever got into this mess. Surely it can’t have been

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