A Season of Secrets (69 page)

She ran as she had never run before. She ran with a prayer on her lips and hope blazing in her heart.

Violet began running too.

As, with wings on their heels, they sprinted towards each other and all Carrie’s hopes were confirmed, tears of joy streamed down her face.

‘Oh, Violet!’ she gasped as they hurtled into each other’s arms. ‘You’re alive! I
knew
you were alive!’

They rocked together, hugging each other tight, and then Carrie pulled away from her a little, to look into Violet’s face. ‘Everyone else thinks you’ve been executed. Papa.
Max. Thea. Everyone!’

Violet laughed, delighted at the sensation she’d caused. ‘I would have been, if I’d been arrested for what I thought I was being arrested for, but I wasn’t. I was
arrested for being a prostitute.’

Carrie gaped at her.

‘Don’t look so horrified, Carrie darling. I wasn’t one. I simply rejected a man who objected to being rejected, and he decided to revenge himself on me by having me
arrested.’

She tucked her arm into Carrie’s as they began walking towards the entrance of Gorton’s long tree-lined drive.

‘The bastard in question, Luther Schultz – more commonly known as
Schweinehund
Schultz – is Kripo’s second-in-command. Kripo,’ she said as she saw
Carrie’s bewilderment deepening by the second, ‘is Nazi Germany’s criminal police. In other words,
Schweinehund
Schultz can arrest anyone he wants, on any charge he wants.
He was risking it a bit by arresting me, because I have friends in much higher positions than the one he holds, but I wasn’t arrested under my name, only as a number.’

‘Which meant that when you were finally released, your imprisonment could be put down to an error that he would appear to have no connection with?’

‘Very sharp of you, Carrie love. What he didn’t know was that he was doing me the most gigantic favour, because if he hadn’t had me arrested, I would most certainly have been
arrested on a charge of treason. As it was, being only a number in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, no matter how hard the Gestapo may have been looking for me, they couldn’t have found
me.’

‘But what about when you were released? What then?’

‘Oh, then I had a problem. I had to get out of Berlin fast, and I had no passport. That had been taken when I was arrested.’

They were in the drive now, walking between the avenue of beeches.

‘Then how?’

‘There was another passport. A passport at Berlin’s Central Office for Jewish Emigration in the name of Judith Zimmerman.’

‘So
that’s
why you dyed your hair black!’

‘And it’s probably going to take weeks of washing to get back to its natural colour. Who will be there when we walk into Gorton, Carrie? Is everyone there? Is Roz there? Are Olivia
and Dieter there?’

‘Thea and Roz are there. Max is there, and so is Kyle. Olivia and Dieter are on their way from Ireland. They live there now, and Olivia is having a baby.’

‘A baby?’ Violet’s eyes shone with delight. ‘How wonderful! Do you think if it’s a girl they’ll name her after me?’

‘I think if it’s a girl they’ll name her after your mother – but Olivia is going to be so over the moon at knowing you’re still alive that she’ll probably do
anything you ask of her.’

‘When is the baby due? I’ll have to arrange to be home from America when it is.’

‘America?’ Carrie came to a shocked halt. ‘But you’ve only just arrived home! How soon are you going to be leaving for America?’

‘Quite soon, but not until after there’s been the most glorious welcome-home party for me – and I wouldn’t be leaving even then, if it wasn’t for the screen
test.’

‘Screen test?’ Carrie was beginning to wonder if she was dreaming the entire bizarre conversation.

‘For
Gone with the Wind.
While I was on the train I read in a newspaper that although Vivien Leigh has been signed up for the part of Scarlett O’Hara, she hasn’t started
filming yet. And she’s dark-haired and, as Scarlett O’Hara is Irish, she must have had red hair, mustn’t she? I’m going to get Zsigmund to get me an introduction to David
Selznick, who’s producing. Once he sees me, I’m quite sure I’ll replace Vivien as Scarlett. It’s a part I was born to play.’

‘You’re going to have to do a lot of hair-washing first. And who is Zsigmund?’

‘Zsigmund is Zsigmund Sárközy, a director who was once in love with me – as I now realize I was with him.’

Violet came to a halt. The house was now only a hundred yards away and she was savouring the moment.

With a deep, ecstatic sigh, she said, ‘Let’s hold hands, Carrie, and run all the way to the house.’

Carrie’s smile was luminous as she thought of the expression she would see on Gilbert’s dearly loved face when they walked into the drawing room together. ‘Yes,
let’s,’ she said, taking hold of Violet’s hand and knowing they were about to run faster than they’d ever run in their lives before.

JUNE 1939

Luther Schultz was seated behind his desk in Police Headquarters in Alexanderplatz, his fists clenched, a newspaper laid out before him. The newspaper was the
International
Herald Tribune.
On its front page was the headline ‘Italy and Germany sign Pact of Steel’, but it wasn’t the front page he was looking at. It was one of the inner pages, and
the photograph that was enraging him was a wedding photograph.

The photograph was credited to Rozalind Bradley and the caption read, ‘Movie star Violet Fenton is bridesmaid at Father’s wedding, with Britain’s King and Queen in
attendance’.

The photograph was a group shot, with King George standing on one side of the happy couple and Queen Elizabeth on the other side of them. All of the family, apart from the traitor von
Starhemberg, Starhemberg’s wife and Violet, were unknown to him. Two spaniels sat immediately in front of the bride and bridegroom as if they, too, were guests.

Beneath the photograph was a short write-up of the wedding and where it had taken place, none of which held any interest for him. It was the concluding couple of sentences that had sent the
blood roaring along his veins in a tide of white-hot frustrated fury:

Savagely, Schultz tore out the page and screwed it into a ball.

An American movie would never get past Goebbels’s Film Review Office – especially as it was rumoured that Goebbels would no longer even allow Violet’s name to be spoken in his
presence.

Not only was Schultz no longer able to stalk her; he wouldn’t even be able to see her on-screen. He sucked in his breath, his lips flattening against his teeth. How had she done it? How
had she disappeared from Berlin within hours of being released from Sachsenhausen? Even more bewilderingly, how had she managed to leave the country when he held her passport? And why was her
passport an American one and not a British one? He didn’t understand it any more than he understood how people could look as happy as the people in the photograph looked.

Everyone, including Britain’s king and queen, had radiant smiles on their faces.

A bizarre thought struck him. He seized hold of the sheet of balled-up paper and feverishly smoothed it flat to see if he was right, or not.

He was.

Even the spaniels looked to be smiling.

Also by Margaret Pemberton

Kate Voigt and her father Carl have always been at the heart of Magnolia Square. Then war breaks out, and suddenly it feels as though the Voigts – with their German
blood – are outcasts in their own community. When Carl is interned, Kate’s only support comes from her best friend Carrie and her beloved sweetheart Toby, who is working as a pilot in
the RAF. But when Toby is killed, and Carrie suddenly turns against her, Kate finds herself pregnant and very much alone.

Late one Christmas Eve she is approached by a wounded sailor looking for lodgings. Like Kate, Leon Emmerson is also a lonely misfit and they soon strike up a rapport. But as their friendship and
the war develops, and Kate experiences one traumatic event after another, she wonders if she will ever be a part of Magnolia Square again.

Also by Margaret Pemberton

1945. The war is over, and the inhabitants of Magnolia Square are looking forward to their men coming home and their lives returning to normal. But for some, the end of the
war has brought serious problems . . .

Kate Voigt is finally able to marry Leon Emmerson, a Londoner like herself, but of mixed race. When old man Harvey, a powerful and wealthy figure in south London and greatgrandfather to
Kate’s son Matthew, hears of the match, he is determined that young Matthew should not be raised by Leon. Slowly, insidiously, he begins a plight to wrest Kate’s son away from her.

For Jewish refugee Christina, recently married to commando Jack Robson, peacetime has brought its own special torment. She is convinced that her mother and grandmother have somehow escaped the
terrors of the Holocaust and are alive. But her determination to find them causes her to put everything – even her marriage – at risk.

Also by Margaret Pemberton

It is early summer in 1953, and the friends and neighbours of Magnolia Square are looking forward to celebrating the coronation. The war has become a distant memory and the
future seems rosy. Kate Emmerson looks on with pride at her growing family, including Matthew, whose father was killed during the war. But Matthew’s wealthy relations have never really
forgiven Kate for marrying Leon, a West Indian who works as a Thames lighterman, and when Matthew runs away from his smart boarding school in Somerset the tensions which exist between the two
families come to a head.