Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel by Claire Fuller Page A

girls who sold us loaves of bread. My father had avoided conversations with people who spoke English, hurrying me away from the girl with long hair who said she was from Cornwall and let me have a bite of her ice lolly when I was waiting outside a supermarket for my father, in an unnamed French town.
    “My name’s Bella,” she said. “That means beautiful. What’s yours?”
    I was struggling to swallow the cold lump of ice so that I could tell her I was called Peggy, when my father came back and dragged me away. I would have liked to talk to her, to say the way she smiled reminded me of Becky.
    I looked up and down the meadow. “What people? Where?” I asked my father. The view stretched for miles, down into the valley and back up the other side, but all was green—there weren’t any buildings, not even a barn.
    “Farmers, peasants . . .” My father paused. “People. We’ll have to go around the edge of the forest. Farther to walk, but safer.”
    “Safer from what, Papa?”
    “People.”
    My father readjusted his rucksack and set off along the treeline, keeping the meadow just out of reach to our left. And I followed on behind.
    I wanted to ask how long it would be until we got to die Hütte, if Ute would be joining us, and whether there would be chickens there as well as fish and berries. We had left our hired car on the outskirts of a town days ago and caught a train that carried us across fields and forests and through long black tunnels. My overwhelming impression had been of green and blue—grass, sky, trees, rivers. I had laid my forehead against the window and let my eyes go out of focus. It was hot on the train and stuffy. Every time I moved, the smell of dust rose from my seat, like the air blown from the vacuum cleaner when Ute was in the mood for housework. The journey was uneventful, apart from a brief stop in a town of tall chimneys blowing smoke and factories advertising cigarettes on their walls. An official-looking man shouted into our carriage in a language that sounded like German, and everyone rummaged in bags and pockets. My father handed over our passports and tickets. The man flicked through them and glared at my father and me, and for no reason I could understand made me feel guilty. My father looked the official in the eye and glanced away. He tousled my hair, winked at me,and smiled at the man, who stared back with a blank face before returning our documents. In the evening, we got off at a town whose houses trickled down a steep hillside—pooling together at the bottom, with the lowest teetering on the edge of a river that buckled and kicked. We camped beside it, fell asleep to its fussing, and the next morning my father made a list of the things we needed to buy:
            Bread
            Rice
            Dried beans
            Salt
            Cheese
            Coffee
            Pellets
            Tea
            Matches
            Sugar
            Wine
            String
            Rope
            Shampoo
            Soap
            Needles and thread
            Toothpaste
            Candles
            Knife
    When we had bought and crossed off everything, we passed a hardware shop and, seemingly on the spur of the moment, my father said we should take a look around because there might be things we had forgotten. We stood at the counter and he produced a list I hadn’t seen before. A man in an apron served us by fetching the items my father pointed at until, laid out before us, were a trowel, many packets of seeds, and a brown paper bag of potatoes which were so old they were already sprouting. My father didn’t look at me while he paid.
    What?” he said when we were outside again, even though I hadn’t said anything. “They’re presents for Mutti,” he continued.
    “She hates gardening,” I said.
    “I’m sure we can make her change her mind,” and again, just like on the train,