Fitting the Timelines Together

World War II is still the glue that fits the three story liens together.  It can’t be the Holocaust as such because the players at the time did not know there was a Holocaust. There is a growing suspicion of something being not quite right. Readers will understand, of course but we have to allow the girls their innocence – especially the German girls.

Today we’ve had an incendiary bomb destroy the few valuable belongings that Kathe and Renate managed to bring out of Germany. Bing Crosby has recorded White Christmas and everyone is singing it at Christmas 1942. The Christmas treat is going to see Holiday Inn. The girls form the Post office has disappeared – she became nineteen just after women of nineteen were called up. Berlin is being hammered.

On a more personal level, and in line with Kindertransport trauma experience, Renate finds she has forgotten the words to the German Christmas carols. In fact she is beginning to forget her German entirely. And she wonders whether her friend Angela-from-the-Post-Office will soon be organising the dropping of bombs on Nuremberg and on her father.