Free Hitler's Daughter by Jackie French Page B

soldiers coming, Fräulein Gelber?’
    Fräulein Gelber didn’t look up from the drawers she was emptying. ‘Yes. They will be here soon.’
    Both of them knew that she didn’t mean German soldiers. The enemy would soon be here. They had to escape before the enemy found them.
    ‘What about Frau Leib?’
    Fräulein Gelber shrugged. Frau Leib would have to look after herself, and besides, Heidi realised, she would never leave her family.
    ‘What about my rabbits?’
    ‘Frau Leib will take them. Schnell!’
    Heidi pulled on her stockings. Thick, woollen stockings. They prickled, but they kept her warm. She glanced around her room at the bright starched curtains, the photographs on the wall. Somehow she knew it was the last time that she would see it.
    She left her dolls on the shelf above her bed.
    ‘Come now,’ said Fräulein Gelber.
    Fräulein Gelber’s suitcase was in the corner. She picked it up, and handed Heidi hers.
    Down the long corridor, down the twisting stairs, along the corridor below and past the kitchen.
    ‘Wait a moment,’ said Fräulein Gelber.
    She quickly packed a basket for the journey with bread and cheese.
    But not the sausage, Heidi noticed. Duffi wouldnot like them to eat the sausage. And she would be seeing Duffi soon.
    There were three cars in the driveway, not one. Army cars, with no lights showing. The driver got out of the second car. He took the suitcases and opened the back door. Fräulein Gelber ushered Heidi inside.
    The black shadows danced in the moonlight. She could see the shapes of leaves outlined quite clearly on the ground, and the gleam of the moonlight on the frog pond. The frogs were silent.
    The first car started its engine and moved off. It did not put its lights on. There was enough light from the moon to see their way.
    Their driver started his engine. It spluttered once, and then ran smoothly. They moved after the first car, the third one following behind.
    The house was dark behind them.
    There was a rug on the seat. Fräulein Gelber spread it over their legs. ‘It is a very long way to go,’ she said. ‘Try to sleep.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Heidi. But she did not close her eyes. She looked out the window instead, at the faint moonlit glimpses of everything passing by.
    There was the hedge with the starlings’ nests. And there was Frau Leib’s farm, blacker than the moonlitdarkness. Even the pigs were asleep, and the baby goat called Heidi.
    A plane roared overhead and then another. Fräulein Gelber tensed, and so did Heidi. She hoped it was too dark for the pilot to see them, down below, even with the moonlight.
    The planes passed overhead. No bombs dropped around them. There was silence, apart from the engines of the cars. Heidi relaxed. For the moment they were safe.
    Sometime towards morning she fell asleep, her head on Fräulein Gelber’s arm. Fräulein Gelber snored softly beside her, a wisp of spit on one corner of her mouth.

chapter seventeen
The Bunker
    The walls of the bunker seemed damp, though when Heidi touched them her fingers stayed dry. When she touched the walls she could feel the vibration of the explosions in the world above; the bombs and the tank shells, and other noises too, but Heidi didn’t know what they were. Your fingers felt fuzzy if you left them there long enough. It was a game that Heidi played sometimes.
    There was not much else to do.
    You could hear the explosions too, of course, but it wasn’t the same as feeling them. They just went on and on, so you almost got used to them. Then suddenly there would be a louder one than all the others, a high-pitched screaming noise and then the dull thump, thump would start again.
    The room was small; concrete and steel deep underground, with a concrete floor. There were double bunks along the side. Heidi had wanted the top bunk, but Fräulein Gelber said, No, she might fall out, and took the top one for herself.
    It seemed odd to Heidi that, with the invasion outside, the bombs and rockets and