The Juliet Code by Christine Wells

Author:Christine Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143788362
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

The dawn seeped into my cell slowly. There had been screaming in the night. Running footsteps, then the screams ended on a shrill, piercing note.

Morning brought a wall-faced guard, who yelled at me to hold out the tin bowl for what they laughingly called coffee in this place. It was more like hot juice of acorn. I made myself drink every drop.

My fingertips ran over the tin’s base and found scratches. I turned it over and saw tiny messages etched into the metal.

Someone had written a name and address. Guessing that this girl had wanted someone to let her family know what had happened to her, I memorised the details and filed them away. Perhaps I should do the same. The idea chilled me.

The rest of the messages were by turns plucky, informative and crude, particularly about the guards. I smiled, wondering if the bare inches of space left might hold a small message from me, and if so, what I should write.

Did they take these away for washing? They must. Then the tin bowls would be mixed up and I would get new messages to read. I looked forward to that. Also, a calendar would be useful. I used a hairpin I’d found to scratch the date into the wall. After considering my handiwork, I added yesterday’s date to the left of that and carefully drew a slanted line through it.

Days passed, bringing with them whatever deprivations and humiliations the guards could devise. They were particularly spiteful, these blockish women, and while they had many privileges we did not, the guards still had to spend long hours in this place. Enough to turn the kindest soul into a brute, ready to pummel into submission those below her on the ladder.

Doggedly, I wrote each date on the wall and carefully crossed it out. Surely the allied invasion would happen soon. Perhaps it already had. How would I know in this place?

I decided to scratch the question into my tin. It was weeks before the tin circulated back to me and I received an answer. ‘Soon.’

‘Soon.’ That word they used to placate impatient children the world over. ‘When will we get there?’ ‘Soon, darling. Soon.’

Winter deepened, making those brief hours of dim light even shorter. We were never warm. Never. My body shivered but my mind often drifted to one of those faraway trips to Cornwall.

One day, the door of my cell slammed open. The guard who never lost an opportunity to manhandle me gripped my arm and yanked me to my feet. She told me to strip and handed me my old civilian clothes.

Hope leapt. ‘What is happening?’ I demanded, struggling out of my prison uniform, not even bothering to conceal myself from her probing gaze.

She didn’t answer, but when I’d dressed in the skirt, blouse and jacket that now swamped my scrawny body, she frogmarched me back through the tunnel and into the grim room where more prisoners were being processed.

I stopped short when I saw him. A tall

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