Page 44 of The Lost Story of Sofia Castello

43

LONDON, 1941

‘What do we do?’ I asked, terror gripping me. ‘Where should we go?’ Surely a building like this would have some kind of cellar or basement.

‘Up on the roof,’ Trafalgar said, springing to his feet and passing me a couple of cushions.

‘Are you?—’

‘Crazy? Yes.’ He grabbed the lamp and my free hand. ‘But in this case it makes sense – the building is already weakened and we don’t want to end up trapped beneath it.’ He must have noticed the horror on my face because he gave me a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. The Germans have already bombed this place – the chances of them striking it again are minimal.’

‘Oh really,’ I muttered as we hurried back to the stairwell. ‘And is this based on some kind of scientific law or study?’

He laughed. ‘Well, they do say that lightning never strikes twice. Here’s hoping the same applies to the Luftwaffe. And, anyway, we don’t have the time to get anywhere else. They’ll be here within minutes.’

This didn’t exactly do anything to calm my nerves, but he seemed so self-assured it gave me a strange sense of comfort.

We reached the top of the stairs and he led me through a door onto the flat roof of the building, where we sat down on our cushions beside a large chimney stack. The huge full moon hung in the sky to the right like a giant silver bauble. It would have been a beautiful sight before the war – or before I’d come to London – but now all I could see was a beacon for the German bombers, causing fear to pool in the pit of my stomach. Searchlights began arching across the sky and my fear grew.

‘Remember what I said,’ Trafalgar called above the siren’s wail. ‘This is our way of fighting back and not letting those monsters beat us in here.’ He tapped the side of his head.

I nodded and drew upon the well of courage inside of me – the same courage I drew upon after my mother’s diagnosis, and when I headed to Lisbon on my own at sixteen.

That’s my brave girl , I imagined my mother whispering to me.

A distant hum filled the air, growing louder by the second.

Trafalgar grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight. ‘It’s OK, Sofia – we’ve got each other.’

I looked at him and nodded, and my eyes filled with tears.

‘It’s OK,’ he repeated, moving closer, and he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him, and once again, in spite of everything, I felt comforted by his presence.

The hum grew even louder and the planes appeared in the distance. The air filled with the rattle of anti-aircraft fire, but it seemed to make little difference. I heard distant boom after boom after boom, and the horizon ignited with white flashes, followed by an orange glow.

‘They’re dropping incendiaries over to the east,’ Trafalgar muttered. ‘They must be hitting the docks.’

‘What are incendiaries?’ I asked.

‘They’re smaller bombs designed to start fires,’ he replied.

‘But isn’t that better? Doesn’t it mean that less people will be killed?’

He shook his head, grim-faced. ‘They do it to illuminate the target for the next wave of bombers.’

‘The next wave?’ I echoed with a growing feeling of terror.

‘Yes – the ones with the real bombs.’

I watched in horror as the orange blaze on the horizon grew bigger and brighter. It might have appeared beautiful, but just like the silvery moon, all it signified was imminent destruction and death.