When the Nightingale Sings

by Suzanne Kelman

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Based on an amazing true story, this powerful novel about wartime courage and extraordinary friendship, tells how two women changed the fate of the Second World War and the course of history.

1937, England: When an impossibly shy young woman named Judy Morgan finishes her studies at Cambridge University, she dreams of becoming a scientist, and changing the world for the better.

Meanwhile, a beautiful, young Jewish actress named Hedy Kiesler decides to flee her beloved Austria. The two women meet in London and – as they discover a shared passion for invention – an instant friendship is forged. But no sooner than it is, Hedy risks everything to get across the Atlantic to America, as far away from the Nazi threat as possible, hoping wildly to find fame and fortune, as well as safety.

Letters fly across the ocean between the two women, as they both find themselves falling in love with men who will change their futures forever, whilst trying to find the strength to make their voices heard, and their ideas come alive. But when the world is gripped by a war that nobody could have imagined in their worst nightmares, both Hedy and Judy know they must act now.

Then Judy experiences an impossibly cruel loss. Devastated by grief, and fuelled by a fire of rage against the Nazis and their allies, she finds herself on the darkest of paths. As bombs rain down from Europe to the Far East, Pearl Harbor and beyond, Judy’s fate collides once more with Hedy’s. Because Judy holds a secret that could destroy not only their friendship but threaten the fate of the world forever…

Fans of The Ragged Edge of Night, My Name is Eva and Beneath a Scarlet Sky, will love this unforgettable story about love, courage and devastation set in World War Two Britain, Hollywood and Pearl Harbor. Based on two true stories of amazing ‘invisible women’ who changed the world, this novel shows the power of friendship in the darkest hours of history.

Praise for Suzanne Kelman:

“Oh my goodness! Evocatively unsettling yet hauntingly beautiful… Incredibly powerful… I read this book with bated breath. I cried, I grieved and I hoped…I was left both heartbroken and satisfied. Suzanne Kelman… has floored me with this book.” Robin Loves Reading ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Three words: Have. Tissues. Ready… Fantastic… The emotion that pours from the pages is absolutely heart-wrenching. I loved every minuteof this book, even though it left me a sniffling mess by the end.” Fireflies and Free Kicks ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Wow! Just wow! This book kept me on the edge of my seat right from the get-go!... Amazing.” Goodreads reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“A heart-wrenching story of ordinary people elevated to the realm of heroes through love and sacrifice... An emotional journey of heartache and love that will leave you in tears. One of the finest books I have ever read…

Release date: October 21, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

If she’d learned anything in her eighty-five years, it was that friendships forged in the fire were the hardest to extinguish. They were the ones seared into your being, melded to your heart, a forever charred part of your soul. And Judy had experienced that during the Second World War, the most significant furnace of her life. She wished it was something she could have taught her students, as easily as she had taught them the physics of gravity: the richness of that kind of friendship.

But at her age she now understood, the only way to truly know it was to experience it with another human being, to walk the narrow path through the flames together. Hold their hand to stop them from being consumed, as they did the same for you. It was for that very reason she had never given up hope through all these years, because her once-dearest friend was a part of her very being, and she knew even in the many years of silence between them that she, was part of Hedy’s too.

Drawn abruptly back from her reverie by a scattering of raindrops that splattered across the glass, Judy stared at the steady stream of rain distorting the view of a sycamore tree. The mild snap of weather that had encouraged the first spring flowers from the ground had been replaced this morning by ominous, gray, rumbling clouds and a vicious east wind that tossed the tree’s branches around as if it was juggling the leaves. Its violent blasts rattled the sycamore, wrenching tender new growth from its limbs, turning them into dancing spirals that cavorted across the campus in wind-whipped cartwheels. Accompanying the dramatic tumble of leaves, tremendous gusts whistled through cracks in the sealed university windows, high-pitched and urgent, finding their way to Judy and chilling the back of her neck.

Rubbing gnarled, arthritic fingers across her sagging skin and attempting to draw in the collar of her blouse, Judy wished she could be back in her room in front of her little electric fire in her comfortable beige cardigan. Above her she could hear the excited jostle of an audience filling the room, everybody here to see her. Somehow it seemed so ridiculous. She closed her eyes, reminding herself who she was doing this for. There had been so much excitement at the announcement in the home and on the part of her caregiver, Karen, as if it were a perfect bow to decorate the winter of her life. She hadn’t the heart to tell them all the awards and accolades meant little to the dying.

The dying.

She let the words wash over her again. She was dying. That reality was biting. It still felt raw and unreal to her, even three months after the diagnosis. Being terminally ill was so final; she’d hoped to just die quietly in her sleep but now there would be doctors and hospitals and pain. At least it brought her some clarity. Measuring her life in days and weeks, maybe months if she was lucky, was an interesting experience. With that kind of finality, everything became crystal clear, no more so than when she’d thrown out her most important exam results while doing her death cleaning the week before. Things that seemed so vital in her earlier years were of no consequence now. All that remained were memories of love. The love she had shared throughout her life with Tom. The love she felt for her best friend, Hedy, too. Even after all this time.

A bedraggled sparrow landed in the branches of the tree in front of her and stared at Judy in desperation, its brown mottled feathers splayed like a fan, buffeted by the wind and rain.

As she watched it tuck itself under its wing for shelter, the rhythm of the rain lulled her, and Judy’s eyes became heavy. This new medication seemed to make her drowsy all the time. She would rest them just for a few seconds.

All at once the presence of the sparrow brought something back to her and her eyes blinked open with the reminiscence. The nightingale. The sound of a nightingale had woken her in the middle of the night, from a dream about the war. She closed her eyes again, scavenging through the corners of her hazy memory to retrieve the scraps of recollection. She had been dreaming about the first time they had met. No, that wasn’t the first time they’d met, Judy reminded herself, but that second meeting had stood out. Because it had been the first time she’d met a real Hollywood movie star.

She swallowed down the sadness that recollection brought with it.

Waking from the dream the night before, she’d lain in her bed listening to the nightingale, its sound a comforting presence as she’d attempted to drag herself back from the 1940s. Hedy was like a nightingale, she had told Judy once in jest. Because they sing at night.

Had the nightingale been a sign? Wanting to hear it more clearly, Judy had fumbled with her side lamp, then, stumbling out of bed, had shuffled across to the window, her creaking bones slowly straightening her body into an upright position. At her sill, she’d lifted the window to listen. Taking in a deep breath of the cool spring air with just the edge of the rain to come, Judy had allowed it to blow through her white candyfloss of hair. She hoped it was a sign. She had wanted more than anything to put their friendship right, and now that she was coming to the end of her life, she just wanted to see her friend one more time.

Sitting at her dressing table beneath the window to listen, she opened the side drawer and, running her fingers across the crystal turtledoves inside, she took out the letter beneath them that had been in that spot for years, wondering how a friendship that had been the most important part of her life was no longer part of it any more. She wasn’t sure why, but something had stopped her from throwing it out with all her other papers. Holding the letter carefully in her hand, Judy rubbed two fingers reverently across the flap. It was as thin as crepe paper with age, yellowing and worn with the re-reading. The very last letter she’d received. She imagined Hedy putting this in the post. What had been her thoughts when she’d done that? Had she known they would never see each other again? At least not for all these years? She opened the letter one more time, noting the date at the top, January 1942, and then re-read the words she knew by heart. Finishing it, she’d folded it and placed it in her handbag on her bedside table. If Hedy couldn’t be with her in person tomorrow, at least a little piece of her would be.

All at once, the rattle of a doorknob wrenched her back to the present. Her caregiver stood there in the frame. “Just a few more minutes now, Mrs. Jenkins. Are you ready?”

Judy took a moment to remind herself where she was. She was in the basement of a university campus building, waiting to go upstairs and get her honorary degree. The degree they should have given her many years before, back when she had earned it. She forced a smile onto her face.

“Yes. Yes, I’m ready.”

“Do you need anything? Have you got your speech?” Karen enquired, coming over and straightening Judy’s clothes.

“Yes, I have my speech.”

This was an odd phenomenon, Judy thought. One she’d had to become accustomed to. It felt like yesterday, the hair she’d smoothed down and the clothes she’d buttoned. Now, in front of her, a woman not much older than the refugees she’d taken care of was doing the same for her.

As she reached the door, she called out after Karen. “Is everybody we invited here? Are there any guests out there for me who aren’t from the home? Maybe a friend I invited?”

Karen looked perplexed. “A friend? I didn’t see any friends to invite on your guest list. Apart from us, of course,” she said quickly, apparently not wanting to draw attention to the sadness of her statement. Karen looked panic-stricken. “I would have contacted any friends if I’d known you had any. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Jenkins. Was it someone special?”

Judy shook her head. “I wrote to her myself. But I guess not,” she whispered.

Karen nodded and exited the room to check if they were ready for Judy.

Judy sighed. Sitting down at the table, she pulled out a handbag and took out a compact mirror to check her hair. There were her green eyes, now misted with age. The crinkles in the corners were becoming crepe-like. Her face had a waxy hue to it, and there were red spots on her cheeks and age spots on her forehead. She’d never thought about wearing makeup when she was younger. Now she wished she’d learned how to do that.

She closed the compact and put it back into her bag, and there again was the letter, the letter Hedy had sent her after the bombing raid on Oahu.

“This honor is for you as well, Hedy,” she whispered. “I’m sorry you came to hate me. I’m sorry about everything. You should have received recognition for what you did too.”

Judy swallowed down a tear and rolled back her shoulders. She would not wallow in all the unfairness of the past. She was only going to think good thoughts. Judy drew in a deep breath.

“It’s time,” Karen announced as she walked back through the door, wringing her hands. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

Judy nodded. “I’ll be fine. Just show me the way.”

Taking the time to straighten up her body, Judy ambled toward the door out into the hall then climbed haltingly up the stairs to the side of the stage, balanced by her stick. In the auditorium, she could feel the energy, hear the excitement—lots of people she didn’t know commemorating her for a degree that was of no consequence any more. But she could bring a bit of joy to the home, make Karen feel like her job was validated, so it was worth it. She wished Tom was here. He would have loved this. He would have got a real kick out of it. Patting her on the arm, Karen made her way out to sit in the audience.

And as Judy waited, someone she didn’t know or had never met introduced her. He spoke enthusiastically about her work on the proximity fuse, the invention of chaff, and then lastly the… she couldn’t even think about that last awful project right now. She felt the usual stinging guilt for what she had done, even after all these years.

All at once, she heard clapping again and realized that she had not heard his last words. But she must have been introduced. Slowly she made her way out onto the stage. The room was bright and filled with light. Students young and old were on their feet, applauding her, and she nodded and waved graciously. If only they knew what she was really thinking. She would give up all of this for one more day with her beloved Tom or to see her dear friend Hedy again. But it was kind of them to recognize her work.

The man dressed in university finery walked over to her and handed her the honorary degree. She looked down at it. Her father would have loved to have held this in his hands. Sixty years ago, it would have meant something. Now, it was a piece of paper. She graciously thanked him and then went to the microphone. Carefully scanning the crowd as the entire room enthusiastically clapped their encouragement, Judy didn’t see the striking features she was looking for and swallowed down her disappointment. Pulling her speech out of her handbag, her fingers grazed the frayed envelope as the audience calmed to a murmur.

Even after all these years, she still felt shy about public speaking and was aware that her voice was tight and elderly, her body swaying slightly with the imbalance, a light sweat prickling across her forehead from the medication.

She cleared her throat.

“Back in 1937 I started a job right here in Cambridge as one of only four women scientists in the whole of the Cavendish Laboratories organization. It was a very different time, when women were heralded more for cooking in their kitchens and staying home to raise their children than for inventing strips of aluminum foil to confuse our enemy, but nevertheless, that was my passion. More than anything I wanted to change the world using my scientific skills and soon after I joined the lab, doing my utmost to halt an encroaching enemy that was already marching across Europe…”

All at once a noise at the back of the auditorium distracted her from her notes. Someone had opened the large wooden doors into the building and they creaked their displeasure. Bright white sunlight streamed into the room accompanied by a light breeze and the faintest smell of warm, wet pavements after the rain. Judy squinted her eyes and caught her breath with tentative hope, because framed in the doorway was the silhouette of a woman.

Hedwig knew she only had about a thirty-minute window to escape her husband. She hurried down the back stairs of Schloss Schwarzenau, clinging on to the highly polished mahogany banister with one hand, and yanking up her heavy, midnight-blue, jeweled dress with the other as she attempted a fast tiptoe down the creaking stairs, though it was hard to be quiet in her high-heeled shoes. Finally reaching the bottom step, she sped across the service hallway, moving swiftly to a second staircase that would take her up to the servants’ bedrooms. She held her breath past the kitchen, where inside she could hear echoing voices mingled with the clatter of dishes and the scrubbing of the vast pine table. Climbing the steps, she cursed them as they creaked as well. On the gloomy landing, she rushed along the dimly lit corridor, and on reaching a scuffed brown door, knocked the code that she and Anna had decided on. Before she had even finished the rhythm, the door was yanked open and the ashen face of her maid greeted her. Hedwig rushed inside and closed the door behind her, panting.

Turning her back toward Anna, she felt her maid hastily start to unhook her dress.

“I thought something had gone wrong,” hissed Anna as her trembling fingers made their way with speed down the back of the gown. “How long have they been in the smoking room?”

“About ten minutes,” Hedwig managed to get out as she attempted to recover her breath. “I kept hoping that General Müller, the one Fritz complained about the last time he was here, would tell one of his long-winded stories about the Great War. Sometimes it can work in my favor that my husband is so friendly with the Third Reich. I would have escaped sooner if it hadn’t been for Major Fischer. He just wouldn’t leave me alone, kept pawing at me, breathing his whiskey breath all over me. He is disgusting.”

Anna released the final hook and the gown slid to the floor. Wearing just a silk slip, Hedwig tugged off the diamond necklace and stuffed it into the pocket of her folded coat on the bed next to her open overnight bag.

She turned to face Anna. “Did everything else go well?”

The maid handed her a tissue as Hedwig hastened to the mirror and, staring in its mottled reflection, attempted to rub off as much makeup as she could.

“Yes, Fräulein Sylvie is sleeping soundly with whatever you gave her.”

Hedwig’s lip curled in amusement as she wiped off her eye shadow. She had crushed up some of Fritz’s sleeping tablets into the other maid’s cocoa powder that she knew she drank every night, because Sylvie was always prowling around, and if she’d caught wind of her planned escape she would have gone straight to Fritz. Besides, the only way safely out of the castle was for Hedy to be mistaken for Sylvie herself.

“Also,” Anna continued, “your trunk went out this morning, and it will arrive in London at your friend’s in the next few days. I paid the driver extra to make sure that he took good care of it, as you told me to.”

Taking Sylvie’s maid’s uniform down from a hanger, Anna pulled the dress over Hedwig’s head and started to do up the buttons. It fitted her perfectly. Even in the dark, plain outfit, Hedwig’s trim figure looked stunning. Hedwig had hired Sylvie just the month before, after making her decision to leave her husband, making sure she was the same coloring and build as her mistress.

Anna placed the starched white apron over her head. Sitting down on the bed, Hedwig hastily pulled on the thick black stockings and slipped on unflattering work shoes as Anna affixed a lace cap in her hair.

“As long as you keep your head down, I think you could easily be mistaken for Sylvie.”

Hedwig nodded as Anna continued.

“I will take your bag to the edge of the walled garden. No one will pay attention to me carrying something out through the servants’ exit. I will disguise it as something to be thrown out. That way, it won’t look like you’re leaving with the silver.”

Both drawing in breath, they dashed out into the corridor and back down the servants’ stairs, Anna heading toward the garden and Hedwig to the rear stairs in the main house. It was her best hope of not being seen by the other servants, who would be sure to tell Fritz. She turned in the service hallway to wave, and Anna looked panicked and called out to her in a desperate, high-pitched whisper, “Your earrings!”

Hedwig put her hands to her ears. The diamonds that her husband had given her for their first anniversary were nestled there. Tugging them from her lobes hurriedly, she ran back toward Anna and placed them in her maid’s hands.

“For you, Anna, for all your trouble.”

“Madam, I couldn’t possibly…” she started to say.

Hedwig stopped her with a raised hand. “I don’t know what’s going to happen after this. Once I’m gone, you may lose your position. If any of this comes back on you, I want to know that you’ve been taken care of.”

Anna thanked her, tears in her eyes, and they parted again.

Hedwig rushed back up the staircase, moving swiftly toward the front door. She knew it was risky leaving through the main entrance but the only other way out that was not overrun with the staff cleaning up after the party was the servants’ exit and from there she could be seen clearly from the room her husband was in. As she crept along, she could hear muffled laughter coming from the smoking room, and from the dining room the sound of the butler and some of the castle footmen clearing the last of the dishes. She had to be careful. Anna was the only one she could really count on. Many of her husband’s staff were on his side, and she knew they even listened in to her telephone calls. Hedwig’s heart began to thud in her chest as she strode toward the main door. She couldn’t believe she had finally found a way to escape. She’d been planning it for so long. Now, tonight, finally the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

When Fritz had told her they were to have this large gathering of his clients, she’d alerted Anna to the fact that tonight she was going to leave, and they had quickly put into action the plan she’d had in place for over a month. All of her most expensive gowns and some of her treasures, photographs, and childhood mementos had already been placed in a chest to go ahead to family friends in London. And at his dinner party, she had been the perfect hostess, making sure that her husband had plenty to drink, keeping him merry but also keeping him from sensing any tension in his wife.

Their beautiful dining room with the view of the lake had been laid with all the best china and crystal, decorated to perfection with long cream candles and a profusion of pink roses from the garden. It’d all gone so perfectly. In a way, she would miss this beautiful life, though she would not miss the prison it had become to her in this loveless marriage. She wouldn’t miss some of the guests, either, particularly the members of the Third Reich, whom she found arrogant. And the Italian leader, Mussolini, hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her when her husband wasn’t looking.

She tiptoed past the smoking room, hoping not to draw attention. The main front door was just in front of her. Any minute now, and she would be free.

All at once, somebody strode out from the dining room. It was one of the footmen. Holding her breath, Hedwig put her head down and tried not to catch his eye as she pretended to be fussing with a plant in the hallway. He was juggling a rather large platter that took up all his concentration, and, distracted, he just nodded in her direction as she responded the same. Waiting for him to pass, she opened the front door, and, closing it silently behind her, Hedwig walked out into the fresh night air.

Once outside, she raced to the walled garden to meet Anna.

Her maid quickly handed the bicycle to her with her bag placed in the basket.

Hedwig climbed onto it and took in a deep breath. “Thank you, Anna, for everything.”

“Please take care of yourself,” said Anna. And forgetting her place for a moment, she threw her arms around her mistress and hugged her.

Hedwig tried not to cry. It was not going to be easy leaving her life when she wasn’t sure of what was waiting for her. But she knew she couldn’t stay in Austria, not with the way the Reich was influencing it, especially because she was Jewish, and Hitler openly abhorred her race.

She cycled down the driveway, passing the beautiful flower garden she had only just planted. She would never see the tulips come up next year, and that saddened her a little. Somebody else would get to enjoy them. Her freedom was worth it. She had everything she needed for a few weeks now, plus the dress that Anna had painstakingly sewn all of her other jewelry into. This was what she was going to live on in the next few months.

Hedwig pedaled down the large driveway, heading toward the road. It was a beautiful night. A radiant moon illuminated the stone driveway as she crunched along it. Outside of the gates, she drew in a deep breath for the first time in the last hour, every minute taking her farther away from the marriage that had stifled her, from the man who had kept her captive, and from the life she no longer belonged to.

As she cycled through the brisk night air, all around her, it was silent, just the sound of her own breath being drawn in and out of her lungs gradually calming with the rhythmic motion of the bicycle. She would not stop at the Schwarzenau train station but pedal on to the one over ten miles away, Göpfritz an der Wild. Fritz had been sleeping in his study for over a month since their argument and she didn’t expect he would know she was gone until she was far away. But, still, the further she got away from the castle, the safer she would be.

As she traveled she turned her thoughts back to what had happened a month before, the conversation that had cemented the end of her marriage, and still she felt the deep-rooted pain.

It had been yet another night of entertaining his clients and she’d tried to be engaging and interactive for a while, but, becoming bored with the conversations about munitions and arms deals, she’d excused herself and gone to bed early.

When Fritz had arrived in their bedroom two hours later, she could tell he was drunk. Throwing open the door, he fell into their room, yanking at his tie as he stumbled and swore. Slamming the door shut, he staggered to his dresser, and Hedwig placed the book she’d been reading down on her nightstand and prepared herself for what she knew was to come. Her husband had become harder to live with over the last year, and his outbursts and jealous tantrums had become more and more frequent. Normally their battles ended with them yelling at one another. But she was tired of it.

Before they were married, she’d thought his character was engaging, his fiery tendencies, his passion, his envy as being protective. But as time had gone on, his all-consuming personality had slowly stifled her, strangling her until she could barely breathe.

Not wanting a row, Hedwig decided to keep the conversation light as her husband flung his jacket on the chair and started aggressively to unbutton his shirt.

“Did you have a good time?” she asked gently.

He fixed his gaze on her in his dresser mirror, his eyes swimming with the alcohol as he pierced her with his fury.

“You don’t have a good time,” he mocked her, pulling his shirt out of the top of his trousers, “when you have a wife who is so disobedient!”

She swallowed down the acidic fire in her throat and the anger brimming in her chest. She really didn’t want to fight tonight. He had never hit her but sometimes his anger was so ferocious that it felt as if he’d slapped her across the face. Tonight, she was tired, worn out, and sick of this.

“I had a headache. I had to come to bed.”

“Don’t lie to me, Hedwig,” he said, ripping off his shirt in frustration, a button going flying and skittering across the floor. He marched into the bathroom as he continued to shout his grievances and filled a bowl of water.

“Everybody else’s wife was there, listening and being attentive, but where was mine? Well, her majesty just wandered off to bed. It makes me look so foolish.”

She slipped on her satin robe and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, knowing if she didn’t respond, he would be even more volatile.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” she purred at him, looking up through feathery lashes, trying a new tack. Maybe if she were desirable enough, he would stop yelling at her: she was actually starting to get that headache she had lied about.

Fritz began to splash his face. In between scooping up water, he continued to berate her. “The trouble with you, Hedwig, is you have been spoiled. Spoiled by your father. By everyone you’ve met. You think the world revolves around you. The fact of the matter is, you’re nothing more than that face, and one day you won’t have that. You will be old and ugly and you’ll die with no one to love you.”

She bit back a scalding reply instead kept her tone even. “Surely you will still love me, even when I’m old?” she responded, toying with him, placing a hand on his arm.

He yanked his arm away from her, drying his face with a towel. Looking into the bathroom mirror again, he found her eyes. “You make it impossible for me. First, you embarrass me in front of all of my friends, and secondly, I thought you could rise above your past and be the obedient wife I needed you to be. But you are still that whore who flaunted her body on camera for everyone to see when you completed that despicable act.”

Hedwig felt a tightening in her stomach and held back her desire to slap him as he had started throwing her past in her face every time she upset him now. A few years before, she’d been involved in a film called Ecstasy. Young and naive, she had just been following the director’s instructions but she had become infamous for appearing on screen nude and simulating having sex. All over Europe it had been scandalous. Though he’d married her knowing her past, even seeming a little tantalized by it, as time had gone on, Fritz had become more and more obsessed with the film, trying to buy up every copy he could get his hands on.

Hedwig flounced back into the bedroom, trying to sound airy. “Well, if you won’t love me, then I will have to go back to acting.” She felt satisfied, knowing how much that would needle him. At her own mirror she ran her hands through her soft brown curls. All at once he was behind her.

Wrenching her around to face him, he grabbed her shoulders, crushing her, his eyes wild, his breath reeking of brandy.

“Listen to me, Hedwig Kiesler. No one in the movie industry is ever going to see you as anything other than the little whore you were in that film. You are nothing more than a body and a pretty face. And for every man, you’re only good for one thing. Mark my words, no one in this world is ever going to want you for anything else.”

She sucked in breath, her anger deflated as she felt paralyzed by fear and deeply wounded by his words. He had said worse things to her when he had been drunk, but something about this exchange jarred her to the core. And the truth was, on some level, she feared his words were true.

“Take your hands off me,” she snarled, tugging her arms out of his grip as she marched over to the bed to get some distance between them.

Swearing at her, he strode to his dresser, and, wrenching open the drawer, he pulled out pajamas and from his side of the bed grabbed a pillow.

“I’m going to sleep in my study. You disgust me.”

“Good!” she shouted after him and meant it.

Once he’d slammed out of the room, she pulled out her gold cigarette case from her bedroom drawer, and with her hands shaking violently more with anger now than fear, she lit a cigarette and took in a deep breath, his words still ringing in her ears: “You’re only good for one thing, and no one in this world is ever going to want you for anything else.” And as she tossed and turned, unable to sleep that night, she had made her decision. She would wait for the right time, but she would leave him, find a man to love her just for who she was, her mind and personality as well as her looks.

The next morning, she had sat at her dressing table, her face pale. Her eyes showed the despair she was feeling. And somehow, she was unable to shake the sting of his words. Was it true? Would she never be wanted for anything else? She looked at her face. Was it her fault that her features were arranged in such a way that people found her attractive? She knew for certain their marriage was over, and now she had to prove that his words were wrong. Taking up her comb, she brushed her hair vigorously, becoming determined and making a plan. Hedwig would go out into the world; she’d be taken seriously for who she was. Yes, she’d use what nature had given her. Didn’t everybody? But one day, people would respect her for who she was, not just what she looked like. From that morning on, she h