“Tomas! Tomas!” I was hoarse from laughing, hoarse with fear. “Tomas! Tomas!”

I almost didn’t see him, he was so quick. Sliding out of a stand of bushes, one hand clamping around my wrist, the other over my mouth. For a second I hardly even recognized him-his face dark-and I struggled wildly, trying to bite his hand, making small birdlike sounds against his palm.

“Shh, Backfisch, what the hell are you trying to do?” I recognized his voice and stopped struggling.

“Tomas. Tomas.” I couldn’t stop saying his name, the familiar scent of tobacco and sweat from his clothes filling my nostrils. I clutched his coat close to my face in a way I would never have dared two months ago. In the secret darkness of it, I kissed the lining with desperate passion. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you would.”

He looked at me, saying nothing. “Are you alone?” His eyes looked narrower than usual, wary. I nodded.

“Good. I want you to listen.” He spoke very slowly, emphatically, enunciating every word. There was no cigarette at the corner of his mouth, no gleam in his eyes. He seemed to have got thinner in the past few weeks, his face sharper, his mouth less generous.

“I want you to listen carefully.”

I nodded my obedience. Whatever you want, Tomas. My eyes felt bright and hot. Only you, Tomas. Only you. I wanted to tell him about my mother and Reine and the orange, but sensed that this was the wrong time. I listened.

“There may be men coming to the village,” he said. “Black uniforms. You know what that means, don’t you?”

I nodded. “German police,” I said. “S.S.”

“That’s right.” He spoke in a clipped, precise tone very unlike his usual careless drawl. “They may be asking questions.”

I looked at him without comprehension.

“Questions about me,” said Tomas.

“Why?”

“Never mind why.” His hand was still tight, almost painfully so, around my wrist. “There are things they might ask you. Things about what we’ve been doing.”

“You mean the magazines and stuff?”

“That’s right. And about the old man at the café. Gustave. The one who drowned.” His face looked grim and drawn. He turned my face to look at his, coming very close. I could smell cigarette smoke on his collar and on his breath. “Listen, Backfisch. This is important. You mustn’t tell them anything. You’ve never seen me. You weren’t at La Rép the night of the dance. You don’t even know my name. All right?”

I nodded.

“Don’t forget,” insisted Tomas. “You don’t know anything. You’ve never spoken to me. Tell the others.”

I nodded again, and he seemed to relax a little.

“Something else too.” His voice had lost its harshness, becoming almost caressing. It made me feel soft inside, like warm caramel. I looked at him expectantly.

“I can’t come here again,” he said gently. “Not for a while, anyway. It’s getting too dangerous. I only just managed to get away with it last time.”

I was silent for a moment. “We could meet at the cinema instead,” I suggested shyly. “Like we used to do. Or in the woods-”

Tomas shook his head impatiently. “Aren’t you listening?” he snapped. “We can’t meet at all. Not anywhere.”

Cold prickled over my skin like snowflakes. My mind was a surging black cloud.

“For how long?” I whispered at last.

“A long time.” I could feel his impatience. “Maybe forever.”

I flinched and began to shake. The prickling had turned to a hot stinging sensation, like rolling in nettles. He took my face in his hands.

“Look, Framboise,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry. I know you-” he broke off then, suddenly. “I know it’s hard.” He grinned, a fierce but somehow rueful grin, like a wild animal trying to mimic friendliness.

“I brought you some things,” he said at last. “Magazines, coffee.” Again that tight, cheery grin. “Chewing gum. Chocolate. Books.”

I looked at him in silence. My heart felt like a lump of cold clay.

“Just hide them, won’t you?” His eyes were bright, the eyes of a child sharing a delightful secret. “And don’t tell anyone about us. Not anyone at all.”

He turned to the bush from which he had sprung and pulled out a parcel tied up with string.

“Open it,” he urged.

I stared at him dully.

“Go on.” His voice was tight with enforced cheer. “It’s yours.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Ah, Backfisch, come on…” He reached out to put his arm around me, but I pushed him away.

“I said I don’t want it!” It was my mother’s voice again, screamy and sharp, and suddenly I hated him for bringing it out of me. “I don’t want it, don’t want it, don’t want it!”

He grinned at me helplessly. “Ah, come on,” he repeated. “Don’t be like that. I only-”

“We could run away,” I said abruptly. “I know lots of places in the woods. We could run away and no one would ever know where to find us. We could eat rabbits and things…mushrooms…berries…” My face was burning. My throat felt sore and parched. “We’d be safe,” I insisted. “No one would know…” But I could see from his face that it was useless.

I can’t,“ he said with finality.

I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.

“Can’t you even’s-stay for a while?” I sounded like Paul now, humble and stupid, but I couldn’t help it. Part of me would have liked to let him go in icy, prideful silence, without a word, but the words stumbled out of my mouth unbidden.

“Please? You could have a cigarette, or a swim, or we c-could go fishing-”

Tomas shook his head.

I felt something inside me begin to collapse with slow inevitability. In the distance I heard a sudden clanking of metal against metal.

“Just a few minutes? Please?” How I hated the sound of my voice then, that stupid, hurt pleading. “I’ll show you my new traps. I’ll show you my pike pot.”

His silence was damning, patient as the grave. I could feel our time slipping from me, inexorably. Again I heard the distant clanking of metal against metal, the sound of a dog with a tin can tied to its tail, and suddenly I recognized that sound. A wave of desperate joy submerged me.

“Please! It’s important!” High and childish now and with the hope of salvation, closer to tears than ever, heat spilling from my eyelids and clogging my throat. “I’ll tell if you don’t stay, I’ll tell, I’ll tell, I’ll-”

He nodded once, impatiently.

“Five minutes. Not a minute more. All right?”

My tears stopped. “All right.”

12.

Five minutes. I knew what I had to do. It was our last chance-my last chance-but my heart, beating like a hammer, filled my desperate mind with a wild music. He’d given me five minutes. Elation filled me as I dragged him by the hand toward the big sandbank where I had laid my last trap. The prayer that filled my mind as I ran from the village was a yammering, deafening imperative now-only you only you oh Tomas please oh please please please-my heart beating so hard that it threatened to burst my eardrums.

“Where are we going?” His voice was calm, amused, almost disinterested.

“I want to show you something,” I gasped, pulling harder at his hand. “Something important. Come on!”

I could hear the tin cans I had tied to the oil drum rattling. There was something in the trap, I told myself with a sudden shiver of excitement. Something big. The tins bobbed furiously on the water, rattling the drum. Below, the two crates secured together with chicken wire rocked and churned under the surface.

It had to be. It just had to be.

From its hiding place beneath the banking I pulled out the wooden pole that I used to maneuver my heavy traps to the surface. My hands were shaking so badly that at the first try I almost dropped the pole into the water. With the hook secured to the end of the pole I detached the crates from the floater and pushed the big drum away. The crates bucked and pranced.