Read The Girl With No Name for Free Online

what to do.’ Lisa stared at her in astonishment. Hilda had spoken to her in fluent German.
    ‘No German after today, Hilda,’ Miss May warned her. ‘Only English in school unless I specifically ask you to tell Lisa something important. She has to learn English as quickly as she can and you can help her.’
    The line of children walked smartly along the passage into the school hall. They stood in neat rows facing a platform at one end, the youngest children at the front through to the oldest at the back. Lisa stood next to Hilda, watching and waiting. When the whole school was assembled, Miss Hammond walked in and mounted the platform.
    ‘Good morning, everyone!’
    ‘Good morning, Miss Hammond! Good morning, everyone!’ came the chorused reply.
    Assembly followed its normal passage, much of which was incomprehensible to Lisa, freeing her to follow her own thoughts. How amazing it was, she thought, that the girl beside her, Hilda, could speak German. Was she German too? Had she escaped on a train?
    Before she dismissed the school back to the classrooms and the daily round of lessons, Miss Hammond said, ‘Today we have a new girl joining us. Her name is Lieselotte Becker, and she’s come all the way from Germany, by herself, which is a very brave thing to do. She doesn’t speak English yet, though I’m sure she will before very long, and she doesn’t know anybody, so I want you to make her feel welcome here.’
    Her words were greeted with a murmur from the assembled children and she quelled it instantly with the lift of her hand. ‘Let us hope,’ she said, ‘that none of you will ever have to flee from your home and family to escape persecution.’
    ‘Just the bombing,’ said a voice loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to be unidentified, and there was a ripple of laughter.
    Miss Hammond ignored the comment and simply said, ‘School dismiss.’
    When they returned to the classroom, Miss May moved Hilda to the desk next to Lisa, and pretended not to notice when she spoke to Lisa in German, but the other children noticed.
    At break time they all went out into the playground. It was a sunny day and most of the girls gathered in groups chatting. Some of the younger ones played hopscotch on a grid painted on the tarmac or took turns to turn the rope for a skipping game; the boys, seemingly more energetic, played tag, let off steam kicking a football about or scuffled in a suddenly erupting playground scrap. Hilda led Lisa to a bench at the far end of the yard, away from the more exuberant games, and they sat down together in the warm September sun.
    ‘Where are you from, then?’ she asked.
    ‘Hanau, near Frankfurt,’ Lisa replied.
    ‘Your parents come too?’
    ‘No.’ Tears welled up in Lisa’s eyes and she blinked hard to dispel them. ‘I came on the train. They would only take children, one from each family. My brother, Martin, couldn’t come. He’s still at home with my mother.’ Her voice broke on a sob as she said, ‘I wish I was, too.’ She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘My dad was taken by the Gestapo. He didn’t come back, not for ages, and now Mum says he’s ill.’ Determined not to break down completely in front of this stranger and even more in front of the other children, some of whom were covertly watching her, Lisa blew her nose again and changed the subject. ‘What about you? How come you speak German?’
    ‘My mum’s German. She met my dad when he was working in Berlin. He’s English. My brother Peter and me was born in Berlin, but we’re Jewish, so when Hitler began to make laws against the Jews, we come home here. We’re safe here.’ She looked at Lisa with interest. ‘You Jewish?’
    ‘Yes, well, no, not really. Grandma is and that’s enough over there.’
    At the end of school the two girls crossed the playground to the gate where Aunt Naomi was waiting and Lisa took Hilda over to meet her.
    ‘I’m looking after Lisa at school,’ Hilda said.