The Secrets We Share

by Emma Hannigan

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Amber said.

  After they’d left the room, Clara did what she always did in a crisis and made coffee.

  The atmosphere was incredibly tense as Ava and Max eyeballed one another.

  ‘I wish this could’ve all happened at a better time,’ Clara said.

  ‘I don’t know if there ever would have been a better time,’ Max said. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know about Dad’s death,’ he said. ‘I … I wish I’d been here.’

  ‘So do I,’ Clara said, without condemnation. ‘I know he did too. He never gave up hope that you’d come home some day.’ Max nodded.

  ‘Is that it?’ Ava said, pulling her fingers through her hair. With wild eyes she turned on Max. ‘You bugger off for twenty years with not so much as a glance backwards. You fail to even realise our father has died and now you pitch up acting as if it was a bit of a shame but we’ll all move on?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Max said sadly.

  ‘So why did you go, Max? What was so bloody awful that you felt you had to turn your back on all of us?’

  Max looked to Clara, who was hovering by the sideboard. She picked up an old photograph of the four of them smiling at the beach.

  ‘We had some wonderful times,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t all awful, you know.’

  Ava threw her hands in the air.

  ‘I’m out of here. I’ll come back later when he’s gone. I want to see Nathalie, but this,’ she waved her arm, ‘is a crock of shit.’

  ‘Ava!’ Clara said, trying to catch her hand.

  ‘Leave it, Mama.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ Clara pleaded. ‘Sit down. We need to talk. It’s time.’

  Ava looked from her mother to Max. He nodded ever so slightly and pulled out a chair.

  Clara sat at the head of the table, where Gus used to sit. Silently she begged him to help her.

  ‘I need to take you back in time, so you can fully appreciate my actions,’ she began.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Ava said.

  ‘I was born in January 1938, in Austria …’

  Ava was mesmerised as Clara told them all about the picturesque little village where she lived with her parents and older brother Jacob.

  ‘Jacob? We have an uncle and we’ve never met him?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Max scoffed before holding his hands up. ‘Sorry, continue.’

  Clara went on to tell them that her mama was a seamstress and adored turning lengths of plain fabric into anything from curtains and cushion covers to beautifully embroidered dresses … How she had the most exquisite traditional Austrian dirndl dresses with matching coats. They’d lived on a farm, and although theirs was a simple life, she’d been blissfully happy.

  ‘Jacob and I would climb trees, race through the fields and help Papa with the animals.’

  Ava had an image of a gorgeous little girl skipping like Heidi through meadows with the backdrop of the Alps to make it all look perfect.

  ‘In the winter of 1945, my entire world was turned upside down. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. Jacob and I were attempting to build a tree house in one of the larger trees out the front when a car pulled up.’

  Ava listened agog as Clara explained that neither of them recognised the car or the people who climbed out. Jacob was incredibly protective of Clara and gathered her to him. They both stayed in the safety of the boughs of the tree and waited for their parents to appear from the house. All these years later, Clara could almost hear the dog barking without stopping. Jacob was four years her senior, and although Clara had a vague knowledge of the dangers of Hitler’s men, her brother was far more informed. He instructed her to remain silent in case they were bad men coming to take them away.

  ‘My parents didn’t rush out of the house as we’d imagined they would. Instead they walked ever so slowly and my mother appeared to be crying. My father had his arm around her shoulder and seemed to be supporting her as she struggled to walk.’

  ‘Who were the people?’ Ava asked.

  Clara closed her eyes for a moment. Ava gave her time to gather herself.

  ‘They were Dr Axel Schmitt, along with Lukas and Hannah.’

  ‘As in Oma and Opa?’ Ava said, looking even more confused. Clara nodded.

  ‘I don’t understand. If you say Lukas and Hannah were your parents – and they’re the only grandparents I ever knew growing up – who were you living with?’

  ‘As it transpired, I had been born at the house I’d grown up in, but Jacob was not my brother. Alina and Frank, the couple I’d been living with, were not my biological parents either. Hannah and Lukas were. I had been fostered.’

  ‘How come nobody ever told you?’ Ava looked angry.

  ‘It wasn’t quite as simple as that,’ Clara explained. ‘You see, my biological parents were from different worlds. My father, your Opa, was the son of a cavalry officer from the salubrious first quarter of Vienna. His family were wealthy and held in high social esteem.’

  ‘And who was Oma?’

  ‘An orphaned Jewish housemaid.’

  ‘No way …’ Ava looked utterly stunned. Max remained tight-lipped.

  Clara’s voice faltered as she told Ava what her mother’s letters had eventually divulged.

  ‘So Alina and Frank knew your mother could possibly return for you some day?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m certain they assumed Hannah had been captured and murdered. She was gone eight years, so as you can imagine, the odds of her returning were almost nil.’

  ‘So how did Lukas eventually find her?’

  ‘Before she left to live with Alina and Frank, Hannah wrote a letter to her best friend in the world, a girl who had grown up with Hannah at the orphanage and was working as a housemaid in Vienna. When she was eventually captured and taken away, her employers found the letter under the mattress and brought it to Lukas.’

  ‘How did they know who she was talking about?’ Ava asked.

  ‘The letter was fairly self-explanatory. Would you like to read it?’

  ‘What? You have the letter?’ Max asked in shock.

  Clara struggled to her feet and made her way across the room to the kitchen dresser. Within seconds she had found a large photograph album bound in leather.

  ‘How come we’ve never seen this before? It’s not exactly small,’ Ava asked.

  ‘It’s been here ever since Oma and Opa died. I suppose you never went rooting and I didn’t draw your attention to it either.’

  Clara spread the album out on the table. Behind the first clear plastic page was a yellowed yet still perfectly legible letter written in black ink.

  ‘It’s in German,’ Max said, searching Clara’s face for answers.

  ‘I’ve translated it,’ she smiled. ‘If you turn the page, you can read the English version.’

  Clara’s heart thumped loudly and her throat tightened as she fumbled in her haste to turn the page. As soon as her children read the first line of the letter, they both looked up at her.

  ‘It’s addressed to someone called Ava,’ said Ava.

  Clara nodded.

  ‘Am I named after this woman?’

  Clara nodded again. ‘When you were born, Mama asked if she could name you. I agreed, and so you became Ava.’

  Silence prevailed as Max and Ava read the letter.

  September 1937

  Dear Ava

  I am writing this letter to say farewell. As you know, I am expecting Lukas’s baby. My belly is growing bigger now, so I have decided to run away. I understand that you want me to tell Lukas about this child, but I will not be the cause of his demise.

  His family will shun us both if they find out. He stands to lose everything. I love him too much to allow that to happen. I have seen Liza, the girl he is to marry. She is beautiful and refined and acts like a princess. This is the type of woman Lukas deserves.

  Don’t worry about me, Ava. I know I will be just fine. Frau Schulz at the orphanage has made arr
angements for me to stay with her sister Alina in the west. I will go by train tomorrow to Brixental. There I will be safe and Lukas can continue with his life as planned.

  I know I will never meet another man like him. But I understand that he was never mine to love in the first place. Destiny does not place people like me with people like Lukas Leibnitz.

  I will have our baby to keep my heart from breaking and most of all I will always know what it means to find true love. When I feel as if I cannot go on, I will close my eyes and remember how I felt when Lukas held me in his arms. I will recite over and over again all the wonderful things he whispered in my ear when nobody else could hear. The scars on my heart will remind me that I was loved once.

  Thank you, dear Ava, for believing me when I told you that Lukas loves me. I know I did not imagine what I saw in his eyes. So no matter what becomes of me, it is enough to know that he loved me unconditionally, even if it was only momentarily.

  When we were alone, religion, status and social expectations disappeared. For those precious stolen moments everything was perfect. I wish with all my heart that our love were enough to bridge the gaps. But I know that is an impossible ask.

  The world we live in would never accept us.

  In time I am certain Lukas will forget the little servant girl who passed through his house and touched his heart.

  I am sorry to go without seeing you, Ava, but I cannot bear the pain of saying goodbye. You are the closest to a sister that I have ever had. I will remember your smile for ever. I know I am burdening you with my awful secret and for that I am truly sorry.

  I am sure you despair of me. But I have caused enough trouble in Vienna and a fresh start in a new place is the best thing for me.

  I hope you are settling into your new home and that the people there are being kind to you. I will be in touch once I am settled. If your employers offer you a summer holiday, perhaps you might come on the train and spend it with me?

  In the meantime, I beg you not to tell Lukas where I am. Stay safe and know that I will keep you in my heart and my prayers. Until we meet again, my lovely friend. I bid you auf Wiedersehen.

  Hannah

  ‘Oh Mama, I can’t even begin to imagine how Hannah must’ve felt writing that letter.’

  ‘Isn’t it heartbreaking? She was so astonishingly brave.’

  ‘What became of Ava, though? Did the girls ever get to meet up again?’

  ‘No, Liebling. As I said, she was captured by the Nazis and executed. My father was shocked to receive the letter. He said that the boy who delivered it was devastated and insisted that his mother had done everything in her power to protect Ava.’

  ‘Gosh, that makes me shudder. But I am honoured to be named after Oma’s best friend.’

  ‘Ah, you gave your Oma such joy, Ava. Both of you did.’ Clara looked at Max.

  ‘So how does all of this fit in with Max leaving?’ Ava asked.

  ‘After you were born,’ Clara said, ‘I was very ill. So your father took it upon himself to have a vasectomy operation without telling me. The hospital had informed him that it would be detrimental to my health to have another baby.’

  Ava looked at Max in confusion.

  ‘A couple of years passed and I often wondered why I’d never become pregnant again. I longed for another baby and was terribly upset by the fact that I hadn’t conceived.’

  ‘Dad never confessed?’ Ava asked. Clara shook her head.

  ‘One day, out of the blue, there was a knock on the door. As soon as I opened it, I recognised Jacob. He’d been travelling around Europe demonstrating a new method of brain surgery.’

  ‘It must’ve been overwhelming to see him again,’ Ava said.

  ‘It was, dear. He and Gus hit it off instantly,’ Clara recalled. ‘They’d sit and talk shop for hours on end. Many bottles of whiskey were consumed during Jacob’s five-week stay.’

  ‘He stayed for five weeks?’ Ava said. ‘Wasn’t that a tad long?’

  ‘It didn’t seem that way,’ Clara admitted. ‘He slotted in so well. As his time in Ireland was coming to a close, I found myself slipping into a decline. I’d said goodbye to him once before and I was dreading having to do it again. I knew it was totally different because we were adults, and of course we’d exchanged phone numbers and addresses. But Jacob was headed for America. In those days it wasn’t quite as easy to get there, and with a small child to consider, I knew I wouldn’t see him for a long time.

  ‘Before he left, Jacob asked us to dinner in the local hotel. He was staying there overnight as he’d hosted a medical conference the evening before and hadn’t wanted to disturb us by landing in at all hours of the night. We were so excited about dining at the hotel. We rarely ate out and it was a big deal.’

  As they arrived, Clara explained, Gus’s pager went off, indicating that he was needed for an emergency at the hospital. Apologising to Jacob, he fled, promising to return when he could.

  ‘We were both sad for Gus to miss out on a special dinner, but a part of me was secretly glad to have Jacob to myself for his last few hours.’

  Clara told them about the bottle of champagne that arrived at the table. She had never been much of a drinker.

  ‘The bubbles dancing on my tongue tasted delicious. I drank it as if it were lemonade. Wine followed, and with it came a round of reminiscing about the days when we had run freely through the fields and climbed hills and trees in Austria.’

  ‘It must’ve been amazing to have that conversation with someone who’d been there with you,’ Ava said.

  ‘It was, Liebling,’ Clara said. ‘I hadn’t spoken of those times since leaving. I longed to many times, but I never wanted to upset my parents. So it was truly cathartic to finally revisit those happy days.’

  She explained that Jacob had been painfully shy as a boy, intensely sensitive, while she had always been the more adventurous and mischievous one.

  ‘It was never his idea to climb trees, or capture bees and keep them in jars under our beds,’ she said with a smile. ‘Jacob said it was all down to me that he’d become a surgeon. You see, he’d locked himself away for years after I left.’

  Jacob had explained that the years of solitude had afforded him the time to study. Medicine had always intrigued him and he excelled at his exams. A dogged sense of determination spurred him on and made him into one of the finest brain surgeons in the world.

  ‘He attended a medical conference near Vienna. There he met Dr Axel Schmitt, the wonderful man who had saved Mama after the concentration camp. The last time he’d seen Jacob was that fateful day he’d brought my parents to collect me in Brixental. Dr Schmitt was the one who drove us to Vienna. From there we took a train to catch a ship that would take us away from Austria to our new lives as a family in Ireland.’

  ‘What a small world,’ Ava said. Max remained silent.

  ‘Indeed,’ Clara smiled. ‘He recognised Jacob’s name, and during the course of their conversation he told him how we had settled in Lochlann. When Jacob arrived in Ireland, he went to the post office in Lochlann and found us instantly.’

  Clara smiled and looked down at her hands as she steered the conversation back to Jacob’s final night in Ireland.

  ‘Emotions ran high that evening. I became overwhelmed by the alcohol and Jacob carried me to his hotel room.’

  There was a pause as everyone stared at her.

  ‘I’m not proud of what I did, but I never regretted it.’ She looked directly at her son. ‘That night I became pregnant with Max. After we made love, Jacob begged me to leave Gus. He said he’d never loved anyone else and that meeting again as adults had taken that affection to another level. He vowed to be a father to Ava, and said that he was sorry for hurting Gus but he couldn’t bear the thought of being without me.’

  Ava sat shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘I knew the following morning that I’d made a grave mistake.’

  Max guffawed. ‘And you wonder why I left twenty years ago …’<
br />
  ‘I didn’t mean you were a mistake, Max,’ Clara said with such sadness. ‘You were never anything other than a miracle in my life.’

  ‘Go on, Mama,’ Ava encouraged gently.

  ‘I told Jacob that I loved Gus. Always had. That he was the only man for me and that my emotions had got the better of me the night before. That I should never have made love with him as I didn’t love him in that way. I was very clear with Jacob that I would never leave my husband.’

  ‘How did he take that?’ Ava asked.

  ‘He was devastated. He honestly thought he’d won me over and I would leave with him. He went through all the conversations we’d had during his stay. He had interpreted things completely wrongly and honestly thought I was in love with him. Whereas all that time I had been viewing him as a brother, not a lover.’

  ‘Messy,’ Ava said.

  ‘It was awful. I had nobody to blame but myself. I had betrayed the man I loved most in the world while destroying my relationship with a man who could have been my friend.’

  ‘I understand why you acted the way you did,’ Ava said, sighing. ‘Memories are such intense things. It’s difficult to control yourself when emotions take over.’

  Clara smiled at Ava, grateful for her daughter’s empathy.

  ‘I hid my pregnancy from Gus for a couple of months. I knew that Jacob had to be the baby’s father,’ she said. ‘I contemplated not telling Gus, but I knew I couldn’t live a lie.’

  ‘So you told Dad the truth?’ Ava asked, aghast.

  Clara nodded. ‘I know this might sound contradictory considering what I did … But I loved your father so much. I felt I owed it to him to be truthful. I knew I was taking a massive gamble and that Gus would be well within his rights to walk away from me.’ Clara sighed and fought back tears. ‘He was devastated. Naturally he was also furious. But he chose to stay.’

  Clara explained that she wanted to be honest with everyone involved in the pregnancy, so she wrote to Jacob and told him the news.

  ‘Jacob phoned and begged me to leave Ireland and go to him. He wanted to look after me and the baby and offered to become your father,’ she said looking at Ava.

  ‘Did you consider going?’ Ava asked.