The Girl You Left Behind

about the width of a small barrel, she turned to me. She
     glanced down at her hands, wrenched off her wedding ring and handed it to me, before
     pulling her shawl from her shoulders. ‘Take this. Go now. I’ll hold them up.
     But hurry, Sophie, they’re coming across the square.’
    I looked down at the ring in my palm.
     ‘I can’t,’ I said.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘What if he keeps his side of the
     deal?’
    ‘Herr Kommandant? Deal? How on earth
     can he be keeping his side of the deal? They are coming for you, Sophie! They are coming
     to punish you, to imprison you in a camp. You have gravely offended him! They are coming
     to send you away!’
    ‘But think about it, Hélène.
     If he wanted to punish me, he would have had me shot or paraded through the streets. He
     would have done to me what he did to Liliane Béthune.’
    ‘And risk revealing what he was
     punishing you for? Have you taken leave of your senses?’
    ‘No.’ My thoughts had begun to
     clear. ‘He has had time to consider his temper and he is sending me to
     Édouard. I know it.’
    She pushed me towards the hole. ‘This
     is not you talking, Sophie. It is lack of sleep, your fears, a mania … You
     will come to your senses soon. But you need to go now. The mayor says to go to Madame
     Poilâne so that you can stay in the barn with the false floor tonight. I’ll try
     and send word to you later.’
    I shook off her arm.
     ‘No … no. Don’t you see? The
Kommandant
cannot possibly
     bring Édouard back here, not without making it obvious what he has done. But if he
     sends me away, with Édouard, he can free us both.’
    ‘Sophie! Enough talking
     now!’
    ‘I kept my side of the
     deal.’
    ‘GO!’
    ‘No.’ We stared at each other in
     the near dark. ‘I’m not going.’
    I reached for her hand and placed the ring
     in it, closing her fingers around it. I repeated quietly, ‘I’m not
     going.’
    Hélène’s face crumpled.
     ‘You cannot let them take you, Sophie. This is insanity. They are sending you to a
     prison camp! Do you hear me? A camp! The very thing you said would kill
     Édouard!’
    But I barely heard her. I straightened up,
     and let out a breath. I felt strangely relieved. If they were coming only for me,
     Hélène was safe, the children too.
    ‘I was right about him all along, I am
     sure. He has thought about it all, in the light of day, and he knows I tried, despite
     everything, to keep to my side of things. He is an honourable man. He said we were
     friends.’
    My sister was crying now. ‘Please,
     Sophie, please don’t do this. You don’t know your own mind. You still have
     time –’ She tried to block my path, but I pushed past her and began to walk up the
     stairs.
    They were already in the entrance to the bar
     when I emerged, two of them in uniform. The bar was silent and twenty pairs of eyes
     landed on me. I could see old René, his hand trembling on the edge of the table,
     Mesdames Louvier and Durant talking in hushed voices. The mayor was with one of the
     officers, gesticulating wildly, trying to convince him to change his mind, that there
     must have been some mistake.
    ‘It is the orders of the
Kommandant
,’ the officer said.
    ‘But she has done nothing! This is a
     travesty!’
    ‘
Courage,
Sophie,’
     someone shouted.
    I felt as if I were in a dream. Time seemed
     to slow, the voices fading around me.
    One of the officers beckoned me forwards and
     I stepped outside. The sun’s watery light flooded the square. There were people
     standing on the street, waiting to see the cause of the commotion in the bar. I stopped
     for a moment and gazed around me, blinking in the daylight after the gloom of the
     cellar. Everything seemed suddenly crystalline, redrawn in a finer, brighter image, as
     if it were imprinting itself on my memory. The priest was standing outside the post
     office, and he crossed himself when he saw the vehicle they had sent to take me away. It
     was, I realized, the one that had transported those women to the barracks. That night
     seemed an age ago.
    The mayor was shouting: ‘We will not
     allow this! I want to register an official complaint! This is the limit! I will notlet you take this girl without speaking to the
Kommandant
first!’
    ‘These are his orders.’
    A small group of older people were beginning
     to surround the men, as if to form a barrier.
    ‘You cannot persecute innocent
     women!’ Madame Louvier was declaiming. ‘You take