Chapter 27 Kate

ALNWICK, ENGLAND | DECEMBER 2010

Is that what gives you the nightmares?” Kate asks Audrey, her words struggling up and over the lump of emotion in her throat. “The children?”

Audrey stares at the snowfall outside, her face paler than usual in the late morning light. Her knotty hands are clenched together in her lap, coffee long forgotten and cold in the blue ceramic mug beside her. “Mostly, yes,” she says. “I see their faces. Or at least, what my mind has created for their faces.”

Kate sets the pen down on her notebook, wondering what to say. When they sat down this morning, Sophie and Ozzie snoozing at their feet, Audrey had told Kate this would be one of the most difficult things for her to recount, and that Kate was the only person, aside from Ilse, that she had ever spoken to about it. Kate hadn’t known what exactly to expect. She’d wondered if perhaps she was about to hear how Audrey sustained the injuries to her fingers, or that Ruth and Ephraim were dead. But she wasn’t prepared for this.

She takes a deep breath and a bracing drink of cold water from the glass beside her. People use the term “collateral damage” in reference to war. So sanitized and unspecified. But the damage, the loss, are the real people who happened to be in the wrong place when others chose to kill each other. Human beings with names and families and dreams.

Children.

“It’s a very strange grief, you see,” Audrey says. “An incomparable guilt, really. There is no one in the world who could quite understand it. There’s no support, and certainly no sympathy. And why would there be? We killed children in the pursuit of something that might have been impossible from the start. There were two dozen attempts on Hitler’s life over the years—that we know about—and no one ever managed it. It’s incomprehensible that no one ever succeeded. Our cell got closer than many, but…” She clears her throat in one quick bark. “I haven’t ever forgiven myself for it, and it has been singularly lonesome to carry that burden. To be frank,” she says, “it will be a relief to be rid of it when my time comes.”

“You meant to kill Hitler,” Kate says quietly. “Who ended up murdering tens of millions, directly and indirectly, over the course of the war. Surely that intention counts for something.”

“I doubt the parents of those children would agree.” A log pops in the fireplace. “It will always have been worth it, Friedrich had said. But we didn’t make one modicum of difference. Hitler continued to live and breathe and kill whilst a dozen Aryan families mourned the deaths of their children, and, as we now know, millions of Jewish parents mourned the deaths of theirs, or were murdered right alongside them. Held their little hands as they were shoved in front of the same firing squads, or into gas…”

Her breath comes in heaving waves, her eyes wide and watering.

“Audrey—” Kate reaches for her hand, grasps the age-speckled skin in hers, fighting her own tears now.

“Me telling you all of this, and you recording it… it’s a reckoning. Finally.” Audrey takes another deep breath, as though trying to draw forgiveness from the air itself. “Those children formed the basis of my nightmares my whole life, but I would always wake, wait for my heart rate to still, and push it from my mind, like a fool.” She releases Kate’s hand and sits up a little straighter. “They were in training to be Nazis. So who knows what they would have grown up to be. But at the time, they were still only children. Just children. And no one ever took responsibility for their deaths.” She blinks rapidly. “It’s time someone did. That I did.”

Responsibility for their deaths…

“So… thank you for being willing to listen. And for, well…” Audrey’s lips pucker into a tight screw. “For not judging me too harshly, I hope.”

Suddenly, Kate is sobbing. She buries her face in her hands as she dips into her memories of the accident, that chasm in her mind where self-loathing and denial lurk at the bottom.

“Kate?” Audrey’s voice filters in. “I know this was upsetting. I’m so sorry. Let’s take a break, get some fresh coffee.”

Kate raises her head, takes in Audrey’s thinning white hair, her remarkable yet aged grey eyes. They’re full of genuine concern for Kate, who didn’t mean to drag this up now. But it’s time she took responsibility, too, just like Audrey is. For her parents’ deaths, her role in them. And it’s time she was more honest with Audrey, time she returned her trust.

She sits forward on the edge of the navy armchair as Ozzie approaches, rests his head between her knees, offering his oversized, glossy ears as treatment for Kate’s trembling hands.

“I was driving the car when my parents were killed,” she says. “I let you believe I was a passenger. But it was my fault.”

Audrey tuts. “I’m so sorry, dear. That must be a terrible burden to bear.”

Kate shakes her head, finally looking up at Audrey. Their chairs used to feel much farther apart.

“But terrible accidents happen every day, Kate. You—”

“Except it wasn’t an accident. Not really.” A chill runs through Kate despite the heat emanating from the fireplace. “It’s far, far worse than that.”