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Chapter one

Music is for Dancing

One day, in a big house in Brussels, Belgium, a man took his daughter in his arms. Little Audrey Hepburn looked up and saw some beautiful lights above her. They were as white as snow. She remembered those lights all her life. She always loved the color white. She saw white and remembered her father. Then she felt safe and warm.

Audrey Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels on May 4, 1929. Her mother, Baroness Ella van Heemstra, was Dutch. Her father, Joseph, was half English, half Irish. He worked for many companies and made a lot of money.

Young Audrey enjoyed reading and loved animals and birds. But her greatest love was music. “What’s music,” Audrey asked her mother one day. “It’s for dancing,” her mother answered.

Audrey wanted to be a dancer, but she was unhappy. “I’m too fat,” she thought. “Dancers are thin and pretty, but my face is too round and my legs are too big.”

Her parents were unhappy too. They often fought. One night her mother and father had a big fight. When Audrey woke up the next morning, her father was not there. Audrey cried for days.

Her mother took her to England. At school, Audrey was different from the other girls. The other girls were funny and noisy. They enjoyed sports and talked about their fathers. Audrey was quiet and sad. Her English was not good and she hated sports. She did not talk to anybody about her father. But, slowly, Audrey began to make some friends.

Then suddenly, in 1939, her mother took her away from England. She could not say goodbye to her school friends. There was no time. “Why are we leaving,” Audrey asked.

“There’s going to be a war,” her mother told her. “We’re going to Holland. You’ll be safe there.”

Audrey lived with her mother and two half-brothers in the Dutch town of Arnhem. She became more and more interested in dancing. At the age of ten she wanted to be a world-famous ballet dancer. But one morning, Audrey’s mother came into her bedroom. “Wake up,” she told her daughter. “It’s war.”

In the early days of the war Audrey did not leave school or stop dancing. Then, one day, the Germans sent everybody out of the town. Outside, in the country, there was very little food. Audrey and her family had to dig vegetables in the winter from the hard ground. When the war finished, Audrey was very thin and weak. People from the United Nations came to Arnhem and gave the children milk, sugar, and chocolate. Audrey never forgot them.