A girl and her camera

Epilogue

This *sniff*, is the very last part of this story. Thank you to those few who read it, and those who might read it in the future. It is the first book I'd been able to finish since the angel and the rebel trilogy, and it was difficult for me to finish with such an ending. But all I can really say is thank you, keep reading, and maybe give me a vote!

Yours faithfully,

Julia .M

Her death affected us all. As did his. When papa came into my room, and told me, with the gravest expression, that Martha had been shot dead, I could still recall my reaction, as if it had just happened. I sat there, still as a statue for a moment or two, and then I just screamed. I let my head sink into my hands, and I screamed as if I had just witnessed her murder myself. Martha Gillespie, my best friend...gone. How could fate had been so ruthless?

When Martha's mother recieved the telegram, an entire two days after it happened, her reaction was ten times worse than mine was. She didn't cry, she didn't scream. For a while, she barely did anything. The death of her youngest daughter had sent her spiralling into a three-day state of shock, that it seemed next to impossible to pull her back out of it. How could anybody? If I'd found that my dear Marianne had been killed for loving somebody, I would've done the exact same thing.

After the war was over, the puzzle which was Martha's family could never be fully completed. But they could at least find a way to put the remaining pieces back into their natural places. Annabella and Karoline, unbelievably, ended up surviving their impending fate which was Bergen Belson. And the moment they returned to Warsaw, they set about finding Vera. At this point in time, Vera had become as lonely as lonely could get. Without her son to support her, and her daughter...gone, Vera felt she had nobody. And so Annabella only thought it right to reunite the Maarden's and the Gillespie's in the only way left.

As for Michael, well, he again, was doing quite well for himself. Just not in the same way he was at the beginning of the story. During his employment at Auschwitz, Michael fell in love with that girl named Judith. Which honestly, wasn't surprising, the way his feelings were swaying him. And in 1945, when the camp was liberated, he was treated just as most Nazi soldiers were when the allies got their hands on them. He was interrogated, beaten a little, and thrown to the scornful eyes of his former prisoners. But there lay the problem. None of them threw rocks, or screamed death-threats, or spat in his face. And why? Because they recalled no kind of brutality he'd inflicted upon anyone in the camp. Come to think of it, he hadn't even mamed a single one of them, let alone killed any.

After he was eventually released by the Allies, he and Judith went back to Warsaw. Her sister, Masha didn't accompany them. She claimed to have 'bigger things' to do then follow her sister and her Nazi boyfriend. To this day, Judith still hadn't told me whatever happened to her sister. Perhaps she died, perhaps she still lived, or perhaps she's even still working in a whore-house. I wouldn't know.

Perhaps you were wondering about Mr Rodolfo. Well, I'd very much like to say that he ended up surviving the war, and lived a long, happy life. But that wouldn't be fair to his memory. No. On the clensing day of the Ghetto, Rodolfo refused to leave his cafe. Memories of Ameilia, and Lila still lingered there, like dust. And if he were to die, he'd die knowing that his daughter was safe in Switzerland, and that his wife would've been waiting for him. So he made himself a cup of coffee, he cut himself a slice of almond cake, and he sat, waiting for that single bullet to come smashing his glass window to ribbons, and take its' place in his heart. And what would you know? It did. Rodolfo passed away, with a strange, haunted smile on his moustached face, and a puddle of black, milky coffee cradling his cheek.

At this point in the story, like many other points long before, you'll be wondering why I am writing all of this down. Well, the simplest answer to that question would be that it is both my duty, and my instinct to write down the truth. As my husband Bart said, a life such as Martha's should be honoured with more than just a documentary. But if she were still here, she would plainly disagree. She would force you to sit in front of a projecter, and watch as the happy moments, carefully filtered from a world of darkness, come to life in crackled, black-and-white, before your very eyes. Then Martha would conclude the documentary in saying that she knew all along that her purpose in life had nothing to do with her. That she was made, simply to capture the happiness in the lives of others.

Every year, myself, Bart, and those still alive in this confusing puzzle, gather in that old classroom with an old film projecter, and that same, old small, kodak cine with a brown, plastic coating. There, we turn out the lights and we watch, enamoured as the images dance around the room, like the ghosts they all were today. We watch as the people in the cafe Lus dance, as the girls on the street play with their skipping ropes, and as a boy from the cricket picking up the camera without Martha knowing, and film her and Samuel, swinging the cricket bat together. It was then when we know that Martha is watching with us. The same, youthful beauty she was then. Just smiling, as she was in the film. I'll never forget you Martha Gillespie.

Your best friend, always.

Hanna.