The Light Over London Read online

  “Well, I plan to make sure you take at least a little time off,” said Nicole.

  Cara smiled. “I promise I will when my head’s above water.”

  “And when will that be exactly?” Nicole didn’t wait for a response. “And no, seeing Iris doesn’t count, as much as I love her.”

  “She says hello and wants to know when you’ll be visiting, by the way.”

  “Tell her I will as soon as I make you take a day off.”

  Cara laughed. “As though you’ve ever been able to make me do anything I didn’t want to. Remember that stupid dare after our last exams?”

  “I still say you should’ve skinny-dipped in Barlow Pond. It’s practically tradition,” said Nicole.

  “Then you wouldn’t have had anyone to come collect you, Gemma, and Pete from the police station.” She remembered all too well the sheepish grins on her friends’ tipsy faces when she’d shown up to talk the local constables into letting them out of the holding cell without booking them. Simon was supposed to have been with them but had been conspicuously absent, having drunk himself into a stupor a few hours earlier—a sign of things to come, if only she’d known to pay attention.

  “Well, I may not be able to boss you around over the phone, but I can do it in person,” said Nicole.

  “Right, like you can take the time out of your busy schedule flying all over the Continent,” Cara teased.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Well, I’m free now.”

  “You didn’t . . .”

  Nicole laughed. “Why don’t you go answer the door and find out?”

  Cara dropped her phone on the table and raced to the door, ripping it open to find her best friend on her doorstep.

  “You’re here!” Then, for no good reason at all, Cara burst into tears.

  Nicole wrapped her up in a hug, and the familiarity of it dragged another sob from Cara. Nicole had been a constant for so long, grounding her with their shared past while standing by her for the future unknown. Next to Gran, Nicole was the closest thing Cara had left by way of family, and somehow seeing her brought everything to the surface—the divorce, the grief, the move, the anger, the rejuvenation. But mostly it allowed Cara to admit to the loneliness that had crept into her life in Chiswick and hadn’t dissipated in Barlow.

  She pulled back, shaking her head as she wiped away tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just can’t tell you what a relief it is to see you.”

  “Good. I like to be wanted,” said her friend, tossing her long, straightened black hair over her shoulder. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to show me around the cottage I’ve heard so much about and then we’re going down to the pub so I know that at least you have a decent local. Okay?”

  Cara laughed, sniffing a little. “Yes, of course. Come on.”

  An hour later, Cara had pulled on black skinny jeans and a silky green top that were far more appropriate for going out in public than the sweats and camisole she’d been wearing. She was tucked into a wide wooden booth at the Hollow Crown across from Nicole, a bottle of pinot grigio and two glasses sweating on the table between them as Cara told her the story of finding the World War II diary.

  “There’s just something about it,” she said. “It starts like any other diary you might imagine a nineteen-year-old would write. She loves her father. She has a difficult relationship with her mother. She works in a shop.”

  “That could’ve been me writing it when I was a teenager,” said Nicole with a snort.

  “Exactly. But then this man walks into her life and sweeps her off her feet.”

  “The pilot. Do they get married?” Nicole asked.

  “I have no idea. I haven’t had a chance to read much because—”

  “You’re studying for Jock. I don’t think you put this much work into your degree exams,” said Nicole.

  “This is important.”

  Her parents’ deaths had changed everything. Rushing up to Cumbria and finding out she had been too late to say goodbye had been a constant physical blow in the days, months, years that followed, like being hit hard in the stomach over and over again, the nausea building until she could hardly take it. She’d simply put her head down and escaped into work because it was better to be there than at home with an unemployed, spendthrift husband who drank too much, gambled, and disappointed her in a thousand different ways.

  When she’d finally let herself admit that she wanted a divorce, it was as though a fog had lifted. She could at last see the giant compromise her life had become—one she constantly seemed to lose out on. She’d lived in a house she hadn’t really wanted in the far west of London, isolated from Nicole and her other friends until she rarely saw them. In a moment of youthful uncertainty, she’d let herself be pushed into the job Simon had picked for her so that they could afford to live together at twenty-two. And then there’d been her marriage, which had deteriorated until she’d hardly recognized the man she shared a life with.

  She’d promised herself, as she’d numbly sat in her solicitor’s office learning about the steps it would take to untangle her life, that there would be no more losing compromises. She wanted a life of her own choosing. Barlow had been the last place she’d truly felt at home, so she’d returned, a decade after graduating, to start again.

  “So now you’re going to figure out who wrote the diary. Any ideas?” Nicole asked.

  “No, except her initials might have been L.K., and she might’ve been in the ATS, but I’m not sure yet.”

  “Wasn’t that the branch Iris served in?” Nicole asked.

  “Yes, but when I asked her about it, she brushed me off. I don’t know why she refuses to talk about it.”

  “Maybe something bad happened to her,” said Nicole.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well”—Nicole picked up her glass of wine and tilted it toward Cara—“it sounds to me like you need a private investigator.”

  Cara laughed. “I don’t know where they’d even start.”

  “Cara?” Her heart jumped into her throat. Liam stood at the bar a few feet away, pint of ale and notebook in hand.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I thought that was you,” he said.

  Nicole craned her neck to look over her shoulder, and when she turned back, her dark eyes were sparkling with delight. Cara’s stomach sank. She knew that look. It was the one her friend used to wear when they’d go out and Nicole would try to introduce her to every single-looking man in the pub, including, on one particularly memorable evening, Cara’s art history tutor.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. “Nicole, this is my neighbor Liam.”

  Nicole stuck her hand out. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Don’t ask him to sit down.

  “Likewise,” Liam said.

  “What brings you to the pub?” Nicole asked.

  He lifted the notebook. “I was tired of sitting at home going over my lecture notes, so I thought I’d come in and have a pint while I work. I haven’t been to the Hollow Crown before.”

  Don’t ask him to sit down.

  “This is Cara’s first time too,” said Nicole with a smile.

  “A happy coincidence,” said Liam.

  Don’t ask him to sit down.

  “Would you like to join us?” Nicole asked.

  Dammit, Nicole.

  Liam’s eyes flicked over to hers. “If you don’t mind.”

  “No, of course not,” she said, bracing herself for an evening of heading off Nicole’s best intentions. “How are you settling in?”

  “Everything’s still in boxes, but I can never seem to finish unpacking entirely. There’s always one box of books sitting in the garage.”

  “Have you moved a lot?” Nicole asked.

  “Life of a visiting lecturer,” said Liam with a smile. “I’ve taught at Bristol and Exeter, and was in the States as a visiting professor at Reed College in Oregon for two years.”

  “So you’re a professor?”
Nicole asked.

  “At Barlow, I’m technically a reader in the history department. Professorships are rare.”

  “Will you be staying?” Nicole asked, shooting Cara a significant look.

  “Yes. For the first time in my career, I’ve found a permanent placement,” said Liam.

  “Congratulations,” said Cara, lifting her glass.

  While they all toasted, Cara took the chance to study him. He was handsome in an endearing, academic sort of way. He had a good smile, and his hair always seemed to be threatening to flop over his forehead and brush the top of his glasses. The sleeves of his washed-out blue Henley were pushed up to his elbows, exposing ropy forearms and a plain steel watch on his left wrist. He was too old to be boyish, but there was something youthful about the curious energy that seemed to pulse around him. She was sure he was one of the professors students gossiped about, speculating about his private life as he assigned pages of reading, no doubt oblivious.

  “I wanted to ask: Has Rufus’s barking bothered you?” Liam asked.

  “I haven’t heard him at all,” Cara said.

  “Rufus is my dog,” Liam explained to Nicole. “He seems to be adjusting now, but the first day he barked every time the church bells rang.”

  Cara laughed. St. Luke’s marked every hour, regardless of the time of day. “You poor man.”

  “He also keeps escaping. I had to chase him through one of the neighborhood’s yards yesterday.”

  “Whose?” she asked.

  “The big brick Victorian on the corner,” he said.

  She winced. “Not Mrs. Wasserman’s?”

  The grim set of his mouth told her it had indeed been Mrs. Wasserman, the tyrannical octogenarian who patrolled the street. “I barely survived the tongue-lashing. She has a remarkably expansive vocabulary for a woman who looks so sweet.”

  “You have my sympathy. I’ve already had a run-in with her over not taking my rubbish bins in by four in the afternoon on collection days,” she said.

  “There’s always one in every neighborhood, isn’t there?” he said with a rueful laugh.

  Cara toyed with her wineglass, stealing another glance at him. Attractive, seemingly kind, and willing to laugh at himself. A few years from now, when her divorce was well behind her, he might be just the sort of man she’d go for.

  “Liam,” Nicole said abruptly, “maybe you can help us with a dilemma Cara has.”

  “Nicole,” Cara said sharply, not trusting her friend not to say something mortifying like, Cara hasn’t had a date since she was twenty-one. Want to take her out?

  “What?” Nicole tipped her head to one side innocently. “He could help with your discovery.”

  The diary. Of course.

  “What’s this?” he asked, looking between the two women.

  “Cara has a historical mystery she’s trying to solve,” said Nicole.

  “It’s just something I found. The diary of a woman from World War Two.”

  “Really? Did you find it in the cottage?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “At a property I’m helping clear for work. It was in a biscuit tin in the back of an armoire that looked as though it hadn’t been touched in decades.”

  “The tin you showed me earlier this week?” he asked.

  A grin slid over Nicole’s face, showing her to be no doubt concocting all sorts of reasons why Cara had conveniently left out mentioning that she’d done more than just introduce herself to her cute neighbor.

  “What is it that I can help with?” he asked.

  “Cara wants to find out who wrote it,” said Nicole.

  His eyes twinkled. “Then it really is a historical mystery. Do you know where your author was from?”

  “A village in Cornwall. She mentions riding her bicycle to attend a dance, so she couldn’t have been too far.”

  “There was an RAF base in Cornwall,” he said. “Actually, there were a few.”

  She nodded. “The writer mentions the planes and a raid when the Germans bombed a storage building on a base. And she also talks about going to Newquay to the pictures. She went out with a pilot, Paul, who was stationed in the area for a brief time.”

  “A wartime romance. Do you know how it ended?” he asked.

  “Not well, I think, but I’m still reading.”

  “Paul the pilot,” he mused. “We could check the records of the local RAF bases against the dates in the diary to see how many pilots named Paul there were, but it’s a common name.”

  The mention of “we” sent a tingle of excitement through her.

  “Do you think I could see the diary?” Liam asked.

  “Sure,” she said slowly.

  “Cara, you should make Liam dinner and show him the diary then.” Cara tried to nudge her friend with her foot, but missed as Nicole turned to Liam. “She’s a wonderful cook and a fantastic baker. You should’ve seen the cakes she used to make in our terrible student kitchen. They were incredible.”

  Cara was going to kill her friend. “Nicole, I’m sure Liam’s busy with the new start of term and—”

  “I’m not, actually.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “And I can barely warm up a tin of baked beans, so I’ll never turn down a good meal. If it’s on offer.”

  She blinked. How had she gone from sitting at home on a Saturday afternoon to being at a pub planning a dinner she hadn’t intended to give? And yet, somehow she found herself saying, “Does Thursday at eight work for you?”

  “It’s a date.” Liam frowned. “Or rather, not a date. An academic exercise? A historical puzzling?”

  “A diary inspection,” she suggested, oddly comforted by his floundering.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ll call it that. Well, I’ll leave you ladies to talk, and I’ll see you on Thursday, Cara.”

  Cara and Nicole watched him get up from the table and retreat to a booth on the opposite side of the pub.

  “He’s so charming,” said Nicole.

  Cara sighed. “In a bumbling, academic sort of way.”

  Nicole shot her a look. “Making him the complete opposite of Simon, which, I’ll remind you, is a good thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good thing or not. My divorce was only finalized a few months ago. I just uprooted my entire life. I’m not looking for anything right now.”

  “I know the last couple years have been tough, but you can’t just pull up the drawbridge behind you, Cara. You need to see people.”

  “I see people,” she said. “There’s Gran, and I’ve met a few of my neighbors. Charlotte, who lives on the other side of me, seems nice.” She made a mental note to invite Charlotte and her husband over for a drink one day, if only to quash any future needling from Nicole.

  “Then tell me truthfully that you aren’t lonely,” said her friend.

  Cara opened her mouth to protest but shut it again. She was lonely. She didn’t notice it so much in the routine of the day, when she had work and errands to keep her busy, but at night and on the weekends it washed over her in waves. It was why she’d cried when Nicole had appeared on her doorstep. It was why, in a strange way, a tiny part of her was looking forward to the idea of cooking for someone else.

  Nicole covered Cara’s hand with hers. “Start with dinner with the hot professor.”

  “Nicole, it’s not a date.”

  “Oh, right, a diary inspection.” Nicole laughed. “You two are made for each other.”

  Cara scowled, but she couldn’t help but be excited. Whether it was because she might be one step closer to finding out who wrote the diary or because it was Liam who was going to help her, she couldn’t really say.

  26 February 1941

  I’m becoming talented at subterfuge. Today was my day off from Bakeford’s and I convinced Mum that I was going to have lunch with an old friend from school. Instead, I boarded the bus and got off at St. Mawgan, where Paul was waiting for me.

  “Hello, darling,” he greeted me. (I don’t mind it when he
calls me “darling.” It sounds so much less silly than when Kate says it.)

  He took my elbow and led me around a corner. He stopped and touched my lower lip with his knuckle. “We’re out of sight. May I kiss you?”

  I nodded, and so he did.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever become used to Paul kissing me. His lips are soft and he can make my legs feel as though they’re about to crumple beneath me.

  He took me to lunch at the Star Inn. At first I was worried. St. Mawgan is so close to home that there was a risk someone might recognize me, but I felt sophisticated sitting at a table in one of the big bay windows, a glass of hock at my hand. We spoke about our lives. I asked him to tell me about his time at Cambridge, and he made me laugh with stories about nearly falling into the Thames at the Boat Race and stealing a friend’s car at midnight on a wager that he couldn’t drive from Cambridge to Trafalgar Square and back in under two hours. (He won.)

  He’s fascinated by my life in Cornwall, even though I can’t imagine how anyone could find it anything but dull. I tried to explain how sometimes my life seems so small I almost want to scream, and he leaned over the table and took my hand.

  “Where would you go?” he asked.

  “Go?”

  “If you didn’t have to be here.”

  “But I do,” I said. “My parents would never let me leave.”

  “But what if you didn’t have to worry about any of that? If you could go wherever you wanted in the world, where would it be?”

  “California.” When his brows shot up, I explained about the postcard and the trees and how the sun seems to always promise to shine.

  “Then you should see the orange groves for yourself,” he said.

  I almost told him that it isn’t just seeing them. I wanted to live there, an entire world away from everything I’ve known. But instead I said, “It’s silly to wish for something that will never happen.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “So many reasons. There’s my job at the shop.”

  “Mrs. Bakeford could find another girl to work behind the counter and do the accounts.” He smiled. “Although she’d never be as pretty as you.”