2nd Chapter - Who is Helena?

Helena was very small and the sky was very bright. She could now barely remember the feeling of sun on her face and what it felt like to have no worries. She was twelve and her family was on their annual holiday. This was the last time she could remember seeing her parents relaxed.

Her father, a processed meat baron, brought all his siblings and their families together once a year to what he referred to as the family home. It was a new home he brought in 1937 to bring the large family closer together after the death of his mother. They had started this annual tradition last year after her father won some big contract. That’s the year she’ll always regard at the year that changed everything. She now went to a boarding school instead of being tutored by her aunt.

She loved this new house in the south of the UK. It was close to the port town of Bournemouth and had its own pond on the property. She was so excited that she couldn’t stand still and as a result had been reprimanded by her mother more than once. What her mother didn’t understand was how much she had missed her older brother. Algernon (or Algie as she called him) had been sent to a different school and so she only saw him over the summer and on school holidays. Algae was turning into a young man but somehow leapfrogged the cynical stage her male cousins all seemed to go through. He was always able to make her laugh and to tease her in just the right way to make her feel special and loved.

It was the summer of 1938 and Algae was full of excitement about his idea of what to do after he graduated next spring. At dinner that evening, after everyone was scrubbed and not yet arguing about how there was no hot water left for their baths, Algae told his father while all 17 of the extended family listened to what he decided to do.
“I made a decision and will join the Armed Forces after graduation. Enough with that oppressor down south, its our civil duty to fight against him.”

Their father’s answer surprised them all, as he said the next few words that would change their lives forever. “You can’t join. I have been waiting for the right moment to tell you all, but we are moving. We are expanding our meat processing company and will relocate to Germany. The business there has been exploding and I need you to come with me to run the firm there.”

Today, almost 25 years after this evening, Helena still cannot decide what aspect frightened her more: her fathers' whispered order that destroyed her brother’s dream or the alarm she saw for just a second in her mother’s eyes.