Her Hungry Heart Read Online Free Page B

shortly after her father had engineered their escape from the war to safety. When they had thought Mimi’s father would follow them and build a new life for them all. She could hardly remember those days when they still had hope and dreams.
    The children racing the lorry were too far away for their shouts to be audible, but a game was most definitely on. The pedlar shifted gear again and picked up more speed. Jerry hung on, Cassandra waved with both arms. She got into the spirit of things, even turned to Mimi and raised her arm, making her wave. Cassandra knew the children from previous visits. The pedlar’s arrival was always an excitement for them. For security reasons, few callers were allowed on the estate and the entire household and their FBI minders felt the strain of seclusion, no matter how comfortable it was. Now the children would have another refugee from Hitler like themselves as a playmate. This was a real event.
    The lorry stopped in the cobbled courtyard long before the children arrived. A nine-year-old child could hardly expect to understand the power that places can exert upon a life, but Beechtrees and its whole ambience exercised a comforting power over Mimi. The displaced child felt a sense of security, of belonging. With every minute that passed she gained confidence in herself and her future. She climbed down from the cab to stand next to the pedlar, her few possessions spread on the cobblestones next to her. She was ready to confront fate with more hope of happiness than she had expected.
    ‘Cassandra, go tell the cook we’re here.’
    Cook was a large, soft-looking woman in her thirties with kindly eyes, a downy lip, a sharp tongue. She could be ahard taskmaster. A blubbering string of assistants who had left could attest to that. Although Cassandra liked her, she did not envy Mimi having to work for cook. She was from Czechoslovakia, like Mimi, fluent in French, and with Polish learned from a long-forgotten husband. Her English was practically nil. She detested America, Beechtrees, and being in exile. But she loved every one of the royal family she cooked for. And so there she remained, a part of their lives, a significant member of their household. And willing, with many reservations but on the pedlar’s recommendation, to save a life and get some help in her kitchen. A week’s probation, that was all she had promised, and even then Her Highness and the children would have to approve the child as a fit playmate. But the pedlar had paid no attention to that condition. He was sure that Mimi, once seen, would not be turned away.
    Cook arrived in the courtyard almost simultaneously with the Queen. As one, sovereign and cook granted audience first to the pedlar and then to Mimi. It was not difficult to understand why the Queen was so beloved of her people. She was a down-to-earth, courageous and generous soul who had governed with a sympathetic and caring hand. Though now in exile, she would rather have faced the occupation of her country and remained with her people. Prudence and diplomacy, an inability to be the puppet of so evil a regime, made her no less a refugee than the child standing in front of her. More illustrious, a wealthier refugee (she was known to be one of the wealthiest women in the world) but in exile from her home and her people, just like little Mimi.
    More often than not she shopped at the lorry with cook. She unaffectedly played the housewife in her unpretentious cotton dresses, usually with a scarf around her hair. She appeared to enjoy very much the role of country lady and family on holiday in the Berkshires.
    Mimi had no idea what the two women had expected, orindeed what the pedlar had told them. But whatever it was, they were not prepared for her. Though they tried to hide it, surprise was evident in their eyes. Mimi, for all her certainty that fate had at last dealt her a better hand, was full of anxiety. Unconsciously she joined her hands and began wringing them as she