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The Róża I’d known at Ravensbr&uu and desperate hope, the girl who taught es, who’d wisecracked instead of sobbed when she was told she was going to be executed the next day So was different She seemed like a person who has been on a tear for a week and now has sobered up again

The Grand Hotel in Nure with reporters and soldiers, but not with young curvy porcelain-coular ones In fact there weren’t very many women there at all, because the USspouses co out It wasn’t exactly like having French strangers grabbing kisses froirl on VE Day, but Róża and I caused heads to turn People srabbed Róża’s bag People ushered us into the dining rooh my meals were included in my board, I’d have never had to pay for the to buy us drinks and coffee and cigarettes

There was a buffet I carried both our plates so Róża could walk, one hand gripping her cane and the other pointing to what she wanted We’d hardly said anything to each other since we got out of the car, though we’d se of helpful suited and uniformed men But e sat down across fro plates of bratwurst sausages and potatoes, and another plate piled with a erbread Lebkuchen which Róża had collected without h

‘I eat byis still rationed in Britain,’ I said ‘I have one rooas burner Cheese on toast and bouillon cubes’

‘I live in a boarding house I have ood as this, most of the time, but still – here we are! You and ed in a low voice, ‘Bless this food, Rose’

This wasshe said heavy with hidden race over our thin prison soup

I sat up straight and sang a grace fro is coives us bread

Praise God for bread!’

There was delighted laughter and a scattering of applause from the nearest tables around us Róża ducked her head de carah I’d eht us that one!’ she accused

‘I forgot about it,’ I ad that one I never really felt thankful to get food there – just relieved’

‘We are both ungrateful wretches,’ Róża said ‘But praise God for bread anyway Praise God for gingerbread!’

It felt so strange to eat with her – to eat a real ainst each other like sardines for six months We had stood naked in the snow side by side for two hours because one of the fe, and they made our entire barrack line up outside and take all our clothes off so they could hunt for it But we’d never sat at a table together and eaten a decent ot out Itme think I have to stuff it in before you take it away from me,’ Róża accused

‘I know’ And of course we’d never stolen food froreed very weird We’d both been reasonably well-fed for the past year and a half and noere in a restaurant in a fancy hotel It had never occurred towith a fellow prisoner would make me feel like I was still in prison

We asked the hotel reception to fix it so we could share a room, which they were happy to do, because it freed up another rooot undressed for bed, Róża proudly showed off to ee centre in Belgiu they took the bone samples from It held for two and a half years in their caot out I wasn’t even doing anything – just carrying your soup across the gym hall for you’

I realised, suddenly, the notable difference about her – she’d stopped swearing

She peeled her thick wool hose down to her ankles ‘See? Here, in my shin The new scar is where they operated on it in Sweden I have a steel rod in there now, holding everything together I couldn’t stand up for four months!’

I took a deep breath ‘I don’t kno I lost you, Róża’

‘Oh, well I do’ She flung her hose on a chair ‘You were crazy about that reporter You forgot us the second you laid eyes on him’

‘I wanted to tell him all your names! I wanted to tell him about the Rabbits, about the experi everybody’s naed off to be gassed yelling that we should tell the world about it, that’s what Irina told me, and Bob was the first reporter I ran into! It was like he’d dropped out of the sky And then I wasn’t brave enough to tell hihed, not the old raucous cackle, but a soft, regretful sigh of a laugh The ghost of a laugh ‘That was us dropping out of the sky, not him Remember? We’re the ones who crash-landed’

‘I told the American Embassy your nahts It was a little rooht of where ere and what lay ahead of us pressing on us

‘Rose?’ she said softly

‘Yeah?’ I answered

‘It is just as strange to know you are there, and to be warm and comfortable, as it is to eat with you’

‘It really is’

‘Tell ain,’ she asked

She kneould still know it by heart

I whispered to her in the dark

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,

its blackened stuers in the dirt

It claws at life, weaving a raft

of suckering roots to pierce the earth

The first thin shoot is fierce and green,

a pliant whip of furious briar

splitting the soil, gulping the light

You hack it down It skulks between

the flagstones of the garden path

to nurse a hungry spur in shade