Sixty-nine

The holding station was a disused brewery at the western edge of Rome. Grete and the children were housed with twenty-four other captives, including Emilio Marino and his wife, Maria, in an old railway truck. They were kept locked inside and fed with bread and water twice a day. The competition for food was furious and most times Grete failed to secure any for her children before the men grabbed it for themselves or their families. Emilio Marino sometimes secured some for them but Grete was aware of an understandable feeling of resentment coming from Maria because of the position they now found themselves in. 

In the day time they sweated in the heat and at night they shivered in the cold. It was the hardest and worst time for Grete. Her love for Sean had been re-ignited, but now she could only despise him for bringing her children to this. She had been surviving without him. Now her children would die.

When Robert had turned the corner on his approach to the café he was overtaken by a posse of military vehicles. He had frozen in fear, expecting them to screech to a halt beside him and for storm troopers to leap out and seize him. But he had been mistaken. The vehicles had screamed past him and skidded to halt someway beyond the café.

Robert had stepped into the shadows and watched events unfold. He didn’t have long to wait. Storm troopers had disembarked from the back of the trucks and surrounded a couple standing on the pavement. The man wore a grey trilby and a black overcoat. The woman had been Grete. Screaming inside with frustration, self-directed anger and guilt, he had turned and sprinted back to the apartment.