Beyond the Olive Grove: An absolutely gripping and heartbreaking WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  The andartes laughed about it now, as if it were all a good joke, but Sophia could feel only a hard clench of terror as she thought of Alex kneeling on that bridge in the dark, realizing with only minutes to spare that their plans had gone so terribly wrong. She searched among the milling men for Alex, but she saw no sign of him or any of the other SOE agents.

  Then another man came into the camp, his face familiar from the long, wicked-looking scar, visible even from a distance. Perseus. Sophia had never seen him at the camp before, and the sight of him brought a sudden wave of foreboding. Why was he here?

  His hard gaze took in her obvious uncertainty and concern, and he jerked his head.

  “You must leave.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. “What—”

  “Someone has informed on us,” Perseus answered brusquely. “Your name was spoken to the blackshirts. They are looking for you even as I speak. And if they find you…” He did not finish that sentence. He did not need to.

  Sophia could only stare in response; she felt numb and icy with shock, her brain buzzing with the words. Your name was spoken…

  “How?” she whispered. Who would inform on her? She thought of the gifts of food left on her door, by the mangle; it seemed as if everyone in Iousidous had known what she was doing, even if no one had spoken of it.

  Except someone had now. To the blackshirts, no less. “What will I do?” she whispered. “Where will I go?” She couldn’t return home, she realized sickly, not if they were looking for her.

  Another realization following on the heels of the first caused her to gasp aloud. “My father, Angelika—”

  “You cannot save them,” Perseus told her. A flicker of sympathy passed over his face, gone quickly. “You can only save yourself.”

  But I wanted to keep us all safe. That’s all I wanted. Sophia bit her lips to keep the useless words from spilling out. She could not bear to think of her stern father, sweet Angelika, in danger. And as for her…

  “But I have nowhere to go,” she whispered. She felt tears tremble on her lids, a howl rise in her chest. “I have nothing!”

  “One of the andartes will take you to safety.” He laid a hand on her arm. “That is all I can offer you. I’m sorry.”

  It was so very little. Sophia shook her head, hating the finality in his tone, the unbearable gentleness that hinted at things he had not yet told her. “Has something happened to my father? My sister?”

  Perseus stepped back. “Go,” he said, and his features were implacable once more. “Go, and quickly. We will all move from here as soon as we can, but your presence in particular is a danger.”

  She was no use to them now, Sophia thought. They wanted only to be rid of her. She wondered if she would ever see her father and sister again, or if they were even alive. What if they’d been harmed? She imagined the rough knock at the door, the sound of boots, screams…

  A surly-looking andarte approached, his rifle strapped across his chest as he jerked a thumb towards the still-dark mountains. “Let’s go.”

  Wildly Sophia turned back to Perseus. “What of the soldiers?” she asked, her voice ragged. “The Englezoi?”

  Perseus stared at her, stony-faced. “What of them?”

  “Are they—are they all safe?”

  “The mission was successful,” Perseus answered. “That is all you need to know.”

  Sophia knew she would never get another opportunity to ask about Alex; everything had happened so quickly, so terribly. She would most likely never see Alex, or perhaps anyone she ever knew, again. The thought was too terrible to contemplate, a great big chasm of unknowing opening in front of her, inside her, endless and empty. “What of Alex… the explosives engineer? He is safe?”

  Perseus hesitated, his gaze assessing, and Sophia wondered how much he’d guessed. Still he didn’t speak, and she knew he was debating whether to tell her the truth. She flung out one hand, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Please… please tell me,” she whispered.

  Perseus’s expression hardened once more. “He’s dead,” he said flatly. “Now go.”’

  28

  Now

  “Simon,” Ava said faintly. She blinked rapidly, as if her vision might clear in a moment and he would be gone. And yet still he stood there on the stone slab in front of the house, his coat and hair both rumpled. The car keys slipped from her hand, landing on the ground with a clatter.

  Simon smiled crookedly. “Surprise.”

  She felt a welling of emotion, a pressure in her chest, making it impossible to speak. She just shook her head, and Simon moved forward to pick up her keys. He handed them to her, his fingers brushing hers, and even that small contact made everything in her ache.

  “Come inside,” she finally managed, and she unlocked the door to the house. She stepped inside the living room, flicking on the lights.

  She saw Simon take in the few furnishings, the enormous stone fireplace. “Rustic,” he said, and she managed a rather shaky laugh.

  “You should have seen it before.” She put down her bag, feeling as awkward as if Simon were no more than a passing acquaintance, come to pay a sudden social call. “Are you hungry? Do you want something?”

  Simon hunched one shoulder, his hands shoved in his pockets. “A cup of tea would be nice,” he said, and Ava nodded and went to the kitchen. After a moment Simon followed her.

  “This is quite a place,” he offered hesitantly as she switched on the kettle. It took her a moment to realize he sounded nervous. It was so unlike him; Simon had always been the steady one: stoic, often silent, unemotional, and completely confident in himself. Yet now he shifted from foot to foot, smiling awkwardly as Ava bustled about the kitchen. Her hands trembled as she got out the mugs. She was nervous too.

  “Sugar?” she asked, before belatedly remembering that he never took sugar. How could she forget such a thing? She must have made him at least a thousand cups of tea over the years. She gave a little laugh and shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “I suppose—I suppose it’s been a while.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wondering why I’m here,” he said as he took the cup of tea and Ava nodded. “I should have called first.”

  “I called you,” Ava blurted. “A few days ago. I left a message—”

  “I know.” Simon gave her another crooked smile. “I think I’ve listened to it a hundred times.”

  Surprise had her blinking, realization trickling slowly through her. “Then why… why didn’t you call, Simon?” She heard the broken note in her voice and realized this encapsulated so much of what had gone wrong between them. He cared, but he hadn’t called. Hadn’t done or said anything, ever—

  And yet he was here.

  “I was going to call,” Simon said, his hands, those slender, long-fingered hands Ava had missed, cradled around his mug, “but then I thought it would be better to see you in person. Talk face to face.”

  Ava took her own cup of tea back into the sitting room. “So you just hopped on a plane?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  It was so unlike him, so impulsive. Ava glanced up at Simon, knowing there were so many things they both needed to say. “And now that you’re here?”

  “I miss you. I never wanted you to go in the first place.”

  “You didn’t seem as if you minded so much,” Ava answered, and heard the sudden tautness in her voice. She’d thought she was ready to let go of all her hurt, but apparently she wasn’t.

  “What was I supposed to say? You were clearly determined to leave. It was your idea to separate, not mine.”

  “Only because I was so clearly making you miserable!” Ava closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. “And what about the other week, when I called? You were having dinner with Julie—”

  “As friends! Ava, you don’t think I’ve been interested in Julie? I’ve been moaning to her about how unhappy I am and she’s been trying to get us to talk, to make up…”
<
br />   Ava sniffed loudly. “I spoke to her after I called you, and she didn’t tell me you were going out. She as good as lied—”

  “She just didn’t want to upset you.” Simon shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re arguing about Julie.”

  “I’m sorry.” She realized she’d never really thought anything was going on between Simon and Julie, but even the fact of their friendship had stung when she’d been feeling so raw. “I don’t care about that, not really,” she admitted with a sniff. “It’s just all coming out now because we haven’t actually spoken in so long.”

  “And that’s my fault?” he asked evenly.

  Ava let out a tired sigh. “We’re just going to go round in circles again, aren’t we, Simon?”

  “No.” Simon came to sit next to her on the sofa, his thigh nudging hers. “At least, I don’t want to go round in circles. I came here because I want to make it right between us, Ava. I want to be a couple again. I want to try.”

  She opened her eyes, stared down at her tea. “It might not be that simple.”

  Simon let out a rush of breath, and she knew what he was thinking. Why can’t it be that simple? She wished it could be, and yet she knew she held too much hurt and sorrow inside to just go trotting back to England, hand in hand with Simon, as if her trip to Greece had been nothing more than a solo holiday.

  Simon fumbled for her hand, lacing her fingers through his. “I’ve never stopped loving you,” he said in a low voice, and everything in her clenched with both longing and grief.

  She drew a shaky breath. “I never stopped loving you, either. But we were still making each other miserable, Simon, for the better part of a year. I don’t want that to happen again.”

  Simon sighed. “I know it wasn’t easy—”

  “It wasn’t not easy,” Ava corrected sharply. “It was awful. Unbearable. Every day felt like a year.”

  Simon pressed his lips together and nodded. “I know.”

  Ava gazed at him, saw the seriousness in his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and wondered if even now, when they were both trying, they could understand each other. Make it work. She thought of all the months when she’d been prostrate with grief, struggling with severe depression, and Simon had just seemed impatient. Irritated. Stop moping, he’d said.

  “Ava,” he said now, prompting her—to say what? Did he just want her to shrug away the last year and start over? Could she do that?

  “Why didn’t you hold her?” Ava blurted. The question emerged from the deepest part of her, surprising them both. It wasn’t what she’d expected to say, and it clearly wasn’t what Simon had expected to hear. And yet she knew then that she needed to know—it had bothered her, without her realizing, ever since that awful day when she’d looked down into the beautiful, still face of their daughter.

  He stared at her for a long moment, his face expressionless, and then he turned his head so she couldn’t see his face. “Do you think I don’t regret that?” he asked, his voice wooden.

  “I have no idea, Simon, because you never told me. Do you?”

  “Yes.” He passed a hand over his face and then dropped it. “Yes, I do.”

  Ava wanted to touch him, although whether to shake him or hug him she didn’t know. Even now he wasn’t giving her anything; his voice had been completely flat. “So why didn’t you?” she asked. “When they offered?” She still remembered the kindly face of the midwife, offering up her little girl wrapped in a pink blanket like any other newborn, but so still. So very, very still. The midwife had left them alone with her for a little while, and Ava had cradled her to her chest. Their daughter had still been warm; she’d been perfect. But Simon hadn’t even looked at her. When she’d asked, her voice choked with tears, if he wanted to hold her, he’d just shook his head and looked away. And then the midwife had come back and taken Charlotte away forever.

  “Simon?” Ava prompted. His face was still turned away from her.

  “I don’t know.” He turned back to her, and to her shock she saw tears glinting in his eyes. He blinked them back rapidly. “I know that’s not much of an answer, but it’s the truth. I just… couldn’t handle it, I suppose.” He drew a shuddering breath. “It felt so unreal, so awful. I just wanted it all to be over as quickly as possible, to move on, to be able to, and then when—when she was actually gone…” He pressed a hand to his eyes, framing them with his thumb and forefinger. “It was too late.”

  “Oh, Simon.” Tears spilled over onto her cheeks. “I wish you’d told me that before. It always seemed to me like you didn’t even care. Like you were indifferent.”

  “I know it did, Ava.” He dropped his hand, hunching his shoulders as he turned away from her. “Trust me, I got that. You made it abundantly clear. Your grief always trumped mine.”

  “What?” She stared at him in shock. “It wasn’t like that, Simon. I wanted you to grieve. I wanted you to grieve with me.”

  “No,” Simon corrected, “you wanted me to grieve like you. But I couldn’t. I’m not like that, Ava. I never have been. I thought you knew that, understood it. Just because I wasn’t in floods of tears didn’t mean I didn’t feel anything.”

  I’m not a stone. “But if you’d just said—”

  “I suppose I thought my wife would know I grieved for our child, the child we’d been trying to have for five bloody years.” He stood up suddenly, knocking his tea over, the mug shattering on the stone floor, the sound echoing through the room. He stared down at the mess of broken china and puddling tea. “Sorry.”

  “For a broken cup?” Ava shook her head, tears still slipping down her cheeks. She thought she’d cried all her tears for their daughter, but she realized she’d never wept for Simon. She’d never thought about the nature of his grief, the reality of it… only that it hadn’t felt like enough. “Don’t be,” she said softly.

  He looked up at her, and for once the emotion was naked on his face. “I’m sorry for everything, Ava. I really am. I know I didn’t handle things right. I should have spoken up, suggested counseling, something. I knew you were struggling, but I still just wanted to get over it, move on. Not because I didn’t care…” His voice wobbled and he looked down again. “Maybe because I cared too much. Because I was afraid of losing you. Losing us.”

  Ava dabbed at her tears. “I thought you were annoyed with me for still grieving.”

  “Not annoyed. Just… frustrated, I suppose. With the situation more than anything. And with myself too. I knew you wanted something from me I couldn’t give. At least, I didn’t want to give it. I’m still not that kind of person, although I am trying—”

  “Oh Simon, I just wanted you to feel what I was feeling.” She paused, corrected herself. “I wanted you to show what you felt the way I showed it. I suppose, looking back, that was unreasonable. I should have realized we grieved in different ways. It didn’t mean you were grieving less.” As she said the words, she realized how true they were, and how, for the first time, how genuinely she meant them.

  Simon shrugged as a heavy sigh escaped him. “Grief is unreasonable. It’s part of life and yet it feels wrong.”

  “It does.” Ava’s throat had thickened again, and she swallowed hard. “It always felt so wrong, Simon.” Her voice broke then, and Simon moved towards her, pulling her into his arms.

  “Oh, Ava. I know. I know. And I’m sorry, for everything. So sorry. I do miss her, you know. Our Charlotte. I miss her every day. I think about her every day, even when I don’t want to.”

  Ava pressed her face against Simon’s shoulder, breathed in the wonderful, familiar scent of him—of soap and coffee. Her shoulders shook from the force of her sobs, and she could feel Simon’s grief like a living, pulsing thing, connecting them, binding them together.

  After a few long moments her tears finally subsided and she stepped back, wiping her face as she took a shuddering breath.

  Simon wiped at his own eyes. “Do you think,” he began, and then cleared his throat, “do you think we can try
again, Ava? Knowing how different we are? Knowing that I can’t…”

  She gazed at him, at his wire-rimmed glasses and sandy hair and crooked smile, and knew she loved him as much as she ever had. But was that enough? They’d managed not to sort out their differences or really even speak properly to each other for an entire year. How could they make sure that didn’t happen again? That another tragedy wouldn’t tear them apart, simply because of the different ways it might affect them?

  Yet maybe now that they were finally being honest, things could be different. At least, they could start to be. It wouldn’t be easy or natural, perhaps it never would be, but it could still happen. Perhaps they’d needed this time apart to realize just how important their marriage really was… and how much they had to work at it.

  “Ava?” Simon asked softly, and she knew there was only one way to go forward. One step at a time, inching their way together.

  Smiling a little, crying too, she walked towards Simon. He held out his arms.

  It felt so good to be held by him, her cheek pressed against his shoulder once more. He rubbed her back the way he always did, and she closed her eyes. No, it still wasn’t simple or easy. But it was right.

  29

  November 1942

  Sophia curled her knees up to her chest in an effort to keep warm. She was shivering uncontrollably, both inside and out. The andarte had led her to one of the old goatherds’ huts on the mountainside, a bare stone-walled space with holes in the roof and a door that did not latch. With no fire or even a blanket, she had spent the night trying not to freeze to death and wondering what on earth was to become of her—and what had become of her family.

  And Alex. Alex, dead. Her mind refused to accept it; she kept silently repeating the words and then blotting them out, as if denying the fact made it untrue.

  But it was true, it had to be… and if her father and sister were in danger or worse, she was completely alone in this world with nowhere to go. No life to live. She could not possibly see a way forward.