Once the Deed Is Done

<p><i>To be truly alive means having to make choices</i><br><i>To be truly alive is also, quite simply, to love</i><br><br>1945. Dead of night and dead of winter; war brings a stranger to the door; a family is tricked into a act of compassion and danger.<br>Later when peace finally arrives in their small town on the German Heide, Freya and her sister are grateful. The fighting is over, so are the Nazi times; the labour camp on the town outskirts will surely be closed now.<br>But with peace come soldiers - English this time - and hundreds of new arrivals: more strangers - forced labourers from across the heathland and beyond, all with their own losses and stories, and all housed in a new camp on the site of the old. Among these refugees are children - Janina and Lukas - waiting and waiting for word of their mother.<br>In Freya''s home too there is waiting -to be asked about that snowy night; and family secrets, that Freya and her sister must confront. When is an act of kindness an act o