HAZEL
‘I, well . . .’ Hazel sighed. ‘I might need another drink to get my story off my chest!’
Sophia laughed as Rose leapt up and reached for the bottle of champagne, quickly topping up Hazel’s glass.
‘Don’t leave us in suspense!’ Rose said with a grin, before filling her own glass and Sophia’s as Hazel watched on.
‘John isn’t my husband,’ Hazel said, glancing first at Rose then Sophia.
‘Husband?’ Sophia exclaimed. ‘Husband? You never said you were married!’
Hazel giggled and leaned back, wondering what on earth her friends would think. But then, they’d been there with her through far worse, and she doubted either one of them would judge her for falling in love with another man.
‘When I arrived home, it was months before John returned. And when he did, I found out through a friend that he’d been home almost a week without sending word to me,’ she said, remembering the moment so vividly as she recounted the day to her friends. ‘I walked to his house with a heavy heart, wondering if I’d ever feel for him the way I did before the war, but it turned out he’d already made that decision for me.’
‘What? How?’
She laughed. ‘It’s kind of funny now, but at the time I thought my poor mother was going to die from the shock of it all.’
Hazel shut the front door to her parents’ home and started walking, ready to see the man she was engaged to. She toyed with the ring on her finger, the small diamond now so foreign to her as she rubbed her thumb over it. She’d only recently started to wear it again, and the weight of it, the touch of it against her skin, was unusual, somehow making her feel claustrophobic just having it there. John’s family had been distant when she’d seen them recently, his mother no longer excited about seeing her and chattering about how wonderful it would be to have her son home. Now, it was almost as if she’d managed to upset her somehow, which was ridiculous given what they’d all been through and how long she’d been away for.
She was no longer wistful thinking about John, or maybe she was. But there wasn’t the same sense of warmth within her any more when she thought about him, no longer an ache within her to see the man she’d promised to marry. Now there was a swaying of uncertainty confusing her, like being in a storm at sea. Either the feeling would pass once she saw him and threw her arms around him and it would all come rushing back, or the swaying would intensify and she’d want to throw herself overboard. Or maybe her mind was still on someone else, someone forbidden who she’d been trying to forget about all these months.
She quickened her pace, doubting that it would be a case of the former. Maybe her problem wasn’t with John; maybe it was because she no longer felt like the same young girl who’d fallen for him and lovingly waved him off to war. The woman she’d become during the war . . . she was nothing like the woman he’d proposed to. Would he ever believe she could shoot a gun and disarm a man as fast as he could, or even faster? That she’d survived working undercover in France and lived to tell the tale, only she’d kept everything to herself, bottled it up inside so that she was almost ready to explode with it? That she was one of the women that had been whispered about since the war had ended, muttered about by the Gestapo, who’d have loved nothing more than to have seen her with a bullet through her brain? Who’d tried to kill her and so nearly succeeded?
Harry had seen a version of the real her, the Hazel she’d become, which was why it had been so bittersweet saying goodbye to him. Pretending she hadn’t loved him more in the stolen moments they’d shared than she’d ever loved a man before, including her fiancé.
She’d never be the naive young woman she’d once been, and she was certain that the men who had been away serving would never feel the same, either, but at least their families and friends knew something about what they’d been doing. No one would ever know what they’d seen, how they’d coped or the decisions they’d made, and they all had their own demons to face, but she had to pretend like nothing had changed when it had. She’d seen how a man could treat a woman, how he could show her the same respect in the field as he would another man, and she’d become used to it. When her recruiter had told her that both genders were treated equally and had to be for the success of their work, she hadn’t realised the full extent of his words. But she’d certainly become used to the idea.
And now she was about to go back to the role of doting fiancée, with no idea why her beloved hadn’t bothered to contact her and had instead returned home to his family without calling on her. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d given her word to him that they would be married, so she needed to grit her teeth and get on with it, and perhaps hope that time would heal her wounds and help her transition back into her old life.
She kept walking, slowing when she finally saw his home. She had a few more houses to pass, and she took her time, taking deep breaths and readying herself for what she knew was going to be an awkward encounter.
Hazel knocked firmly on the front door, stepping back to wait. She hadn’t so much as received a letter from John since she’d been home, and she was so anxious she was breathing fast.
The door swung open and she was suddenly face-to-face with her future mother-in-law.
‘Oh, hello, Hazel,’ she said, glancing behind her and giving her a worried look. ‘I suppose word has travelled quickly.’
Hazel nodded. ‘I’ve heard he’s home. How wonderful for you to have him back safely.’
John’s mother gave Hazel a long, considering look. ‘You haven’t heard?’
Hazel shook her head slowly. ‘Heard what? He is all right, isn’t he? Has something terrible happened? Is that why he hasn’t called on me?’
She watched as his mother pushed the door open properly and beckoned for her to come in. Something strange was going on, only Hazel had no idea what it was.
‘I’m sorry, love, this isn’t something I agree with but there’s nothing I can do about it. Come with me.’
Hazel followed, her anxiety giving way to panic now. What had happened to John? What was going on?
‘I don’t mean to intrude,’ Hazel said quickly, wishing she hadn’t come. ‘If there’s a better time or . . .’
‘John, you have a visitor.’
Hazel opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. She stared at the man who’d half risen from his chair, his hand on the shoulder of a beautiful brunette, the other woman’s eyes wide as she stared back at her.
John looked as handsome as he always had. His dark brown hair was thick and she watched as he pushed it off his face when some fell over his forehead, his gaze flitting from her to the woman beside him and back to her again. And just like that, the ball of anxiety deep within her, the feeling of being unsteady at sea, lifted. She should have been heartbroken, she should have dropped to her knees and sobbed or screamed the house down, anything, anything but have to bite her lip to stop from laughing. Because it was so obvious that this beautiful young woman, her stomach bulging from pregnancy as she shifted in her chair, was with John. Her John.
‘Hazel, I wasn’t expecting you,’ John stuttered, so unlike his usual composed self. ‘I . . .’
She looked at his mother, who was shaking her head, then she turned her attention to the man before her.
‘Tell me everything, John,’ Hazel said, pleased with how confident her voice sounded. ‘I deserve to know what’s happened here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘I should have come to see you.’
‘Yes, you should have.’ There was no excuse for her to find out this way, not after she’d waited for him, and she didn’t want him to see how secretly happy she was, even if his actions had embarrassed her.
‘This is Pénelopé,’ John said, gesturing towards the other woman. ‘She’s my . . .’ He shut his eyes for a moment before stepping closer to her and speaking in a lower voice. ‘Pénelopé is my wife. I met her in Italy.’
‘And you didn’t think to write to me, to contact your fiancée, and mention that you’d married another woman? That you had a baby on the way?’ She wanted to be hysterical and make him see how appalling his manners were, but she was mostly irritated that he’d put her through this when she could have found out months, weeks ago and not fretted so much about him coming home.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘We’re so sorry, my dear. We were looking forward to welcoming you into our family.’
Hazel felt sorry for his mother when she spoke.
‘Thank you,’ Hazel said warmly, not about to be rude. ‘I’m understandably hurt after waiting so loyally for John to come home, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, I suppose.’
John went to say something but she shook her head. ‘Here,’ she said, taking the ring from her finger and holding it out to him.
‘No, you don’t need to give it back,’ he said quickly.
She laughed. ‘I don’t want your ring as a reminder of our failed engagement.’ She pressed it into his palm and stepped forward to place a kiss to his cheek. Maybe he’d fallen in love with the Italian woman, or maybe he’d simply got her pregnant and had to marry her, but either way she was strangely relieved.
‘I wish you happiness,’ Hazel said honestly. ‘You shouldn’t have ended our engagement like this, but I do hope you’ll be happy.’
Hazel looked at his mother, wringing her hands near the door, then his new wife with one hand protectively to her stomach. This Pénelopé had left her family behind to follow John, given up everything to be with the man whose baby she was carrying, and Hazel actually felt sorry for her. Perhaps John didn’t even want to be with her but had decided to honour his unborn baby instead of the promise he’d made to Hazel.
‘Can we speak in private?’ he asked.
Hazel shook her head. ‘There’s no need. Please just let me be.’
John touched her elbow and she fought the urge to tear her arm away, knowing it was silly. ‘It was different over there, Hazel. If I could explain what I’ve been through, what it was like being away from home and the things we had to do, I would. I promise you, I would.’ His hands were shaking and she could see the trauma of what he’d experienced reflected in his eyes, knew instinctively how much he must have struggled. Perhaps he still was.
‘I understand what you’ve been through,’ she said.
‘No, you don’t. I mean, you can’t. No woman can understand.’
Hazel could have laughed. If only he knew. He might have been away much longer than she’d been, but she was fairly sure that she’d seen and done things that would easily rival his experiences. It also told her that he’d never been the right man for her.
‘The war has changed us all.’ Hazel was ready to leave, she didn’t need this to drag on for any longer than it already had. ‘Goodbye, John.’
She didn’t turn when he touched her arm, didn’t listen to his words or those of his mother as she heard her raise her voice and scold her son as if he were a child still. Instead she walked out with her head held high. Her vision should have been blurred with tears, her face bright red from the humiliation of what she’d just found out, heart racing, but it wasn’t.
Instead she was wondering how to tell her mother, but then that would be easy. She’d done nothing wrong, so her mother could gossip and moan about John and his family with her friends, her father could be angry that someone had broken a promise to her, and her friends could rally around and cluck like hens about what an awful thing John had done to her. And then she’d be free.
Free.
There would be no more covert operations, no more risking her life or worrying about being caught and killed. And she was free to marry whomever she pleased and to do what she wanted with her life. She’d had a taste of being independent and being treated as the equal to any man, and she wanted that for the rest of her life. Damn it, she was going to demand it!
So instead of crying and running down the road, she burst out laughing and tilted her head back as she walked, letting the sun warm her face and sink into her skin. Her fingers were almost itching to find a pen, to write a letter to the one person she’d tried so hard to forget about and should never have pushed from her thoughts or her heart.
The chains were gone. Nothing was holding her down, not now.
It was time to start her life over again, and she couldn’t wait.
‘You married Harry, didn’t you?’ Sophia asked, shaking her head like she could hardly believe it the moment Hazel stopped talking. ‘You found him!’
‘I did,’ she confessed. ‘I’d never forgotten his address – he’d given it to me before we parted ways – and I wrote him a letter telling him how I felt about him, and that I was no longer engaged to be married.’ She laughed. ‘Writing that bloody letter was almost harder than working in France with you lot!’
They all sipped their drinks, and Hazel spoke again before either of her friends could. ‘John arriving home with an Italian wife should have broken my heart, but it didn’t. I had to pretend to be sad when I told my parents, when I was in fact jumping for joy inside. And the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘You do realise that we could all see it even when you two couldn’t, right?’ Sophia teased. ‘It was almost painful to watch you two falling in love.’
Hazel shook her head. She’d known, of course she’d known, that Harry was the one for her, but she’d been engaged. It wasn’t like she could have acted on her feelings.
‘I suspected as much,’ she confessed. ‘But never in a million years did I expect to end up married to the man. Things turned out pretty well for us,’ she admitted, talking about more than just her finding Harry. ‘I mean, after what we went through, I couldn’t ever imagine coming back home and pretending like our war experience was no different from anyone else’s. Because it was different.’ She cleared her throat and looked each of her friends in the eye. ‘One day the world will talk about us. It will start as whispers about the women who infiltrated France. They’ll talk about disguises and gasp at the type of training we might have done, the fact that we knew how to kill and code and courier. One day, maybe by the time we have grandchildren, we’ll be able to smile, knowing the women who made history, those women they speak about with such admiration . . .’ She had tears in her eyes now but she didn’t bother trying to brush them away. They fell and she continued on, not scared of crying. ‘We are those women, and it makes me so proud thinking about what we did. Sophia, we’re so fortunate to have men in our lives who know the kind of women we became, because they saw us for who we truly are.’
Sophia held out her hand across the table and Hazel squeezed it, but it was Rose who looked like she needed the comfort, her shoulders shaking as she bravely, openly cried in front of them without turning away.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Rose. Truly I am. We both are,’ Hazel said. ‘I didn’t mean to exclude you. It must be so hard for you to hear about us and—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Rose said, dabbing at her cheeks. ‘It’s enough to see you both happy, to see that you’re loved. I had years with Peter, and it’s enough for me knowing that he would have wholeheartedly approved of everything I did. He would have been in awe, but he also always knew how brave I was, that I wasn’t afraid to stand up for what was right or share my opinions.’
‘Must have made for interesting dinner party conversations, then,’ Sophia said with a giggle. ‘What in the world did his friends think of him, having such an outspoken wife?’
Rose sipped her champagne as they waited for her response, and Hazel did the same, taking a small sip of hers.
‘It did and they couldn’t stand me! But, Sophia, I’m so pleased that you found your Alex. You deserve to be loved and to get your chance at happiness with him.’
‘I wish the end of the war had been different for you,’ Sophia replied, her voice low.
Rose squeezed Sophia’s hand as Hazel watched on. ‘So do I. But I married a man I loved and he treated me with so much love and respect that no man will ever live up to his memory. But don’t ever think I’m not bursting with happiness over you both!’
‘Truly?’
‘Look who I have,’ Rose said, pointing to Francesca. The little girl had fallen asleep, her head tucked into a deep cushion on the sofa, her pretty little mouth open as she slept. ‘She’s my reason for living now. She makes every day worth getting out of bed for, every demon worth facing.’
‘Our men fought that war, on the ground, day after day,’ Sophia said. ‘My own countrymen, my own father, fought against everything I believed in.’
Hazel held her hand tight across the table, listening to her friends talk.
‘But it was what we did that won the war, I’m certain of it. Our networks and our people undercover in France, we changed the outcome, and we need to be so proud of that.’
They were thoughts Hazel had already had, things she often pondered in the early hours of the morning when her husband was fast asleep beside her. If she hadn’t helped, hadn’t been part of their amazing network of men and women, maybe she wouldn’t have had a safe bed to sleep in at all.
‘Shall we toast those in our networks who didn’t make it?’ Rose asked.
Sophia held up her glass of champagne, and they clinked them gently together. ‘To the fallen,’ she murmured.
Hazel held up her own glass and smiled before taking a sip. ‘Can we all promise one thing?’ she asked. ‘Can we all meet, every year, here or somewhere equally wonderful?’
‘We’ll meet here every year, no matter what,’ Rose said firmly. ‘But next time you must bring your husbands, and in years to come, your children, too.’
‘Then it’s a deal,’ Hazel said.
‘We’ll be here. Absolutely, we’ll make it every year, no matter where we are,’ Sophia agreed.
They all sat in silence for a moment, before Hazel cleared her throat. ‘To us,’ she said, holding her glass high.
‘To us,’ the others said in unison.
This was right; being together, celebrating their highs and mourning their losses. Hazel was certain they’d be friends for ever, until they were old ladies sitting in their rocking chairs, laughing and whispering about the things they’d done when they’d been young enough to risk it all. She laughed and smiled through her tears at her friends. After everything they’d been through, nothing could be more perfect than tonight. Nothing.