The Light Over London Page 6

  Now Cara suspected she’d just been another marker of status—the right kind of girl with the right kind of background—but she couldn’t deny having been a bit dazzled by Simon from the moment they’d met in a Barlow pub as students. Smart and charming, he’d painted a picture of his own brilliance so seductive she’d believed it for years. When his redundancy came, seemingly out of nowhere, she’d assured herself he would find another job at another hedge fund quickly. But weeks had stretched into months and he’d stopped boasting of the interviews he was setting up. The headhunters he was certain would call had never materialized. He’d spend nights out, telling her that he was networking, but networking shouldn’t have ended so often with him snoring through his drunkenness on the sofa.

  The sponge slipped from her fingers, splashing into the water and sending a soapy spray into her face. She wiped her cheek, the last traces of the day’s makeup coming off on her fingertips, and sighed. Life was better without Simon than with him. That afternoon’s phone call was evidence enough. After everything that had happened, all of his promises that he was getting better, he was still patronizing and self-important. Talking to him had left her feeling drained and sad at the thought of how long she’d lived in denial of the problems that were right in front of her. She’d focused on working twice as hard to try to keep their bank accounts from slipping into overdraft because it was easier than admitting that her seemingly brilliant husband wasn’t who she thought he was—a truth that pressed hard on the tenderness in her heart.

  But it was the lying that had hurt the most. An application for a second mortgage on the house he’d tried to convince her to sign without reading it through. Credit cards taken out in both their names that she hadn’t known about. The gambling debts. He’d been sinking for years, and when it became obvious that he was drowning them both, he’d refused to change.

  Her eyes drifted up out the kitchen window. It looked out into a narrow side return the last tenant, a talented gardener, had done her best to spruce up with pots of sculptural bay trees. Cara had brought the worn wooden bench that had stood outside of her kitchen in Chiswick and arranged her pots of herbs on it. In several weeks, she’d have to bring the tender plants inside to protect them from the first frost, but for now she liked being able to look at them as she cleaned.

  Across the brick wall, she could see the top of a window in Liam’s house. She wondered how he was spending his first evening on Elm Road. The lights were on downstairs, and she could hear the faint strains of guitar and drums drifting through the air.

  She should’ve been friendlier, taking up his sister’s suggestion that they have dinner together. He was just a neighbor, nothing to be fearful of, but her scars still tugged uncomfortably.

  The doorbell sounded, startling her.

  She shut the faucet off and dried her hands on the tea towel as she walked barefoot to the front door. The bell sounded again.

  “Coming!” she shouted. When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. “Oh! Liam.”

  He smiled, warm and open. “I’m sorry to bother you, it’s just that I think you dropped this.”

  He held up her phone in its purple-and-teal flowered case.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking it from him. “It must’ve fallen out of my bag.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “I apologize again. Rufus is a constant cause of embarrassment in my life, but I love him.”

  “As you should.”

  “Is that an Elkes tin?” he asked.

  She followed his gaze to the biscuit tin sitting innocently on the sideboard where she’d dropped her keys and her bag.

  “Huntley and Palmers.” She picked it up and tilted it to show him the name painted on the top.

  The corner of his mouth hitched up. “Is it meant to look like a bookshelf?” he asked, leaning closer but not stepping forward—almost as though he knew the cottage was her sanctuary.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Extraordinary. When do you think it’s from?”

  “Probably the forties or fifties, but I haven’t authenticated it yet,” she said.

  “Authenticated it?”

  “I work for an antiques dealer. I found it when I was clearing out an estate today.”

  “Extraordinary,” he said again as he rocked back on his heels. “I had no idea we shared a common interest. I’m a lecturer of history at Barlow University.”

  So that was what his sister had meant about absentminded professors.

  “What’s your area of specialty?” she asked. Maybe he could help her figure out who the author was.

  “I’m a medievalist.”

  Not his era then.

  “Well, I should finish cleaning up,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, sniffing the air. “Whatever was for dinner smells delicious.”

  The opportunity to invite him in hung in the air. She could easily pull the leftover tart out of the fridge and pour him a glass of wine. He’d just moved. He might want company.

  Next time, she promised herself. A day when Simon hadn’t called and her muscles weren’t aching in places she’d forgotten she had. A day when talking to Liam didn’t make her feel quite so thrown off-axis.

  “Thanks again for returning my phone.”

  “Of course, of course. Anytime.”

  As he walked out of her yard, she shut the door before she could see whether he’d turned to wave again.

  She carried the tin back to the kitchen table and pried it open. She’d left it in the hall because she hadn’t wanted to risk the possibility of something spilling and destroying the diary before she’d even had the chance to read it. First, she pulled out the photograph of the woman. A corner of it had been bent at some point and folded back into place, and she smoothed her thumb over it now.

  “ ‘L.K. on the Embankment,’ ” she mused as she pulled out the diary and flipped open the front cover. There was no name or initials or address. That would simply be too straightforward an end to this mystery. She would have to figure out who the diarist was the hard way.

  She thumbed past the first entry and began to read.

  15 February 1941

  Kate’s wish was granted. I went to the dance dressed in her crepe, which really does suit her better even though she said it fit her too tightly in the chest three times before we’d even left her house. But I went, and would you know, something actually happened there. A real, honest-to-goodness exciting thing. I hardly know where to start, but I’ll try, for I think this was one of those nights I’ll want to remember for the rest of my days.

  I met Paul. He’s an officer and a pilot. I thought at first he was one of Kate’s admirers, but then he hardly looked at her all evening. Instead he danced with me. At first he overwhelmed me, as though he could see straight through to my soul and know exactly what it was I was thinking. I’ve never felt that before.

  When he returned me to Kate and her airmen, she wouldn’t stop asking questions, and I became flustered. How do you explain something you can’t seem to understand yourself? But when I stepped outside for some air, he followed me. We talked, and he kissed me. It was sweet, all butterflies and heat. When we went back inside, all I wanted to do was dance with him, and we hardly left each other’s side all evening.

  We danced and danced, as though there was no worry and no war. I could see Kate watching us, wondering what it was that had happened when we both disappeared outside. When she and I finally had to pull our coats on to cycle home, she tried to ask, but I pretended the wind made it too hard to hear. By the time we made it back to the village, the edge of a storm had caught us up in the wind and rain, and she had to pedal home or risk being soaked through. I’ve never been so happy for rain in my life.

  I’m not ashamed of having kissed Paul, although Mum would be horrified if she found out. She is so determined that Gary and I should be married after the war, no matter how many times I tell her I could never think of him that way. To me he’ll always be the l
ittle boy tumbling over his undone shoelaces as he raced around at the back of the pack of neighborhood children.

  There was always something different about Gary. The solicitor’s son. The most well-off boy in the village. While we ran wild in cotton smocks and knitted wool sweaters always threatening to burst at the elbows, he had little navy sport coats and crisp white shirts. He was a Moss, and we all knew that meant he was better than us, even if he never made us feel it. Perhaps because he knew that it really didn’t matter what his father did or that he lived in the big white house with a stone gate around it at the edge of town. He was never going to leave the village either.

  I know Mum worked hard to become friends with Mrs. Moss, although it’s strange, because surely Mrs. Moss sees that Mum only wants to be friends with her because she has the largest house in the village. Still, I know Mrs. Moss encourages Gary and asks him in every letter if he’s written to me, which is why I receive one a week like clockwork, bland enough to make it through the censor with hardly a mark.

  Paul is the very opposite of bland. Handsome and erudite, he seems worldly in a way no one else here does. He told me he comes from London and went to Cambridge for university. He dances beautifully, and he’s easily the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. I still wonder why he chose me out of all of the girls at the dance, but when he kissed me, it was as though it was the only thing he’d ever wanted to do.

  That is what I couldn’t explain to Kate as we rode home. To her, the airmen are nothing more than a constantly changing buffet of admirers. From time to time, she’ll allow one of them to buy her an ice cream or take her for a walk along the beach, but she knows better than most how to keep them at arm’s length. When I asked her about it once, she told me it isn’t wise to become too attached. They’re bound to be sent away from Cornwall at some point, and knowing that they’re out there on the battlefield when we’re at home safe is too difficult.

  5

  LOUISE

  It was so easy for Louise to slip out of the house undetected while her mother hung out the washing on Monday afternoon she wondered why she hadn’t tried it before.

  She’d worked earlier that day at Mrs. Bakeford’s, nipping home to have a lunch of a sausage, a shredded bit of one of the cabbages from Dad’s vegetable patch, and some bread Mum had baked fresh that morning, spread with a scraping of margarine. She’d choked down her glass of milk, which had been reconstituted from a powder that the Ministry of Food claimed tasted no different from the real thing. Louise would gladly have forsaken it, but her mother still set it out for her at every meal. It was easier to simply drink it than to argue.

  The breeze off the Atlantic played with Louise’s brown hair as she stuck her hands into her dark green wool coat and buried her chin a little deeper in her muffler. The rains of the previous week had given way to a gloriously crisp day, the brilliant sun breaking through the winter gloom, but there was still a wicked bite in the air.

  As she rounded the bend in the lane, she spotted Paul, tall and handsome in his dark uniform. Her heart leaped up when he turned, his eyes brightening. He threw away his cigarette and grinned. “There you are.”

  He moved to kiss her on the cheek, but she pulled back, glancing around.

  “We mustn’t. Not here,” she said. No one was out digging for victory in their vegetable patches, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching.

  “Nosy neighbors?” he asked.

  “You’ve never lived in a village. Give me your arm. That’s safe enough.”

  He held out his arm for her like a gentleman but leaned in close enough that she was wrapped in the warm reassurance of intimacy. “All right, but I plan on stealing a kiss from you the moment we’re out of sight.”

  Louise swallowed. “Only if I let you.”

  A pause stretched between them, and Louise felt a flash of worry that she’d gone too far. She’d meant to walk the fine line between cautious and flirtatious, but she was hardly an expert. Her cousin or any number of girls would’ve known what to do, how to walk and talk with a man who’d kissed them. They wouldn’t feel awkward, as though their limbs were somehow moving without their permission, their entire bodies outside of their control.

  Her worried gaze flicked up to Paul’s, but then he threw his head back and laughed long and hard, pulling her closer into his side.

  “I do like you, Louise Keene,” he said, as though it was a confession and a revelation all at once. “You say exactly what’s on your mind.”

  Did she though? Her brow furrowed as she examined that thought from all sides. She’d never been the sort of girl to speak up, rarely drawing attention to herself whether at school or home. Yet with him she wanted to ask herself, Why not?

  “Where are we going?” she asked as they turned toward the shore.

  “A spot one of the other pilots in my unit told me about. He said it was a secret and I’ll never have seen anything like it.”

  She allowed him to lead her on, even though the likelihood of him showing her something new in Haybourne was slim. They wound their way down the cliff path to the rickety wooden steps someone had installed years ago to get down to the little white sand beach that lay below.

  “Nearly there,” said Paul.

  “I used to bathe on this beach when I was a little girl,” she said, her hand hovering over the rough wood banister. She wished she’d worn gloves to protect herself from splinters.

  “Did you have a pail and a spade to build sandcastles?” he asked with a laugh.

  “Yes, and my mother made me wear a wool cardigan over my bathing costume some days when the wind was too high.”

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Louise’s short leather heels sank into the sand, and she looked around at the beach, just the same as it had been her entire life save for a few new pieces of driftwood that had been tossed up during the last storm.

  “Is this it?” she asked.

  He clucked his tongue. “I can’t expect to impress a Haybourne girl by taking her to the very spot she used to go bathing.”

  He pulled something out of his pocket. It was a little compass, smaller than the divot at the center of his palm.

  “How sweet,” she said, touching the brass instrument with one finger.

  “You call it sweet, I call it lifesaving.” He handed it to her, the needle trembling a little as it swung north. “It’s an escape compass. Fliers like me carry them on our missions in case we’re shot down behind enemy lines and need to navigate our way over unfamiliar territory. But this one is . . . more than that.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Every time I go up, I know it could be the last time. And every time I land, I’m grateful. I’ve carried this on every mission, and I never fly without it. Maybe it’s what’s keeping me safe.”

  “Paul . . .”

  “That must sound silly to you,” he said.

  “It doesn’t.”

  He raised his head, a lock of hair falling over his forehead. “Are we always to talk of sad things, you and I? What’s the line from Romeo and Juliet?”

  “ ‘A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things,’ ” she recited.

  “I think, Louise Keene, that if my masters at Rugby had had you in a class, they wouldn’t have paid any attention to us boys.”

  Louise blushed at the compliment. “But you went on to Cambridge.”

  “Trust me when I tell you that has no bearing on the intelligence of a man.” He tugged on her arm. “This way.”

  They made their progress across the beach slowly, Louise stopping once to empty her shoes of sand, letting each bare foot hover for fear of ripping her precious stockings. Paul offered to carry her, but she declined, telling him he was going to have to work harder than that to sweep her off her feet. He laughed, and she felt braver for having said it.

  When they reached the spot where the bottom of the cli
ff met the easternmost stretch of sand, she realized where he was taking her.

  “The Smugglers’ Cave,” she said.

  “You guessed.”

  “We’re nearly out of sand to walk on,” she said with a smile.

  “I was told we’ll have a couple hours before the tide comes in and blocks off the pathway back to the beach. Have you been before?” he asked.

  “Not in a very long time. A boy from the neighborhood tried to lead us all on an expedition to reclaim smugglers’ gold and we nearly were stuck because the tide started rushing in. Da and Mr. Itzler had to come round with a rowboat and get the last of us out.”

  It had been Edward, Mr. Itzler’s son, leading their little band, with Kate and Mary Hawkley in the front and Dea Wells and Gary trailing behind with Louise. They’d had a grand time, each of them armed with sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper packed by their mothers. Edward even had a torch, and the more intrepid children had ventured from the first cavern through a tunnel to another. Louise, however, had hung back with Dea, content to stay in the light spilling through the mouth of the cave.

  It had been the perfect afternoon until they’d lost track of time, none of them being old enough to wear a watch. Dea had been the one to shout that the water was rising. The froth of the churning sea that had seemed magical only a couple of hours before suddenly felt sinister, advancing on them more rapidly with every passing moment.

  She understood now that they’d never been in any real danger. The adults knew that if children seen playing on the beach hadn’t returned home by the time the tides rose, they were likely in the Smugglers’ Cave, but it had been terrifying as a child. She would never forget the relief of seeing her father, solid and steady, jumping off the rowboat’s bow and wading in to scoop her up.