Danny picked up his pen from the kitchen table and scribbled in the final answer to the crossword in that day’s newspaper. He should have spotted it ages ago – it turned out to be an anagram and he could usually recognise one as soon as he read it. He must be distracted, he thought. His mind was still on the meeting he’d been called in to that afternoon.
He heard the door open and flicked the newspaper over to the front page. The headline said that Paris had been liberated. That must be good news all round. The allies had been making further inroads all across France, but to win back the capital was a huge success and he couldn’t help but smile at the account of the Parisians cheering the troops as they marched through the streets. It was enough to give everyone hope.
Kitty came through to the kitchen. ‘You beat me home, Danny. My bus broke down, and I ended up walking some of the way.’
‘Bad luck,’ he said automatically, wondering how he was going to broach the subject of his news. He hoped Kitty would understand and not be upset. It wasn’t as if he had much choice, when it came down to it. ‘The kettle’s just boiled if you want a cuppa.’
‘I’m far too hot,’ moaned Kitty, taking the top sheet of the paper and fanning herself with it. Then she caught the headline and stopped. ‘That’s such good news, isn’t it? That’s a real milestone. Imagine what those people must be feeling after all that time. Did you read this page?’
‘Of course,’ said Danny. ‘I was as keen to find out what was going on as you are. It’s what we’ve all been hoping would happen for ages. We’ve got Hitler on the run, now. I didn’t just turn straight to the crossword.’
‘Well, you usually do,’ Kitty pointed out, sinking into a chair on the opposite side of the table to her brother. It was still early evening and the light was shining through the back window. It was far too warm to argue for long. ‘How was your day? You look as if there’s something on your mind.’
Danny squirmed. How was it that his sister could tell when he was worried? He thought he was pretty good at hiding his feelings when he had to, but it never worked with Sarah or Kitty. ‘Make me a cuppa and I’ll tell you,’ he suggested.
‘Danny, you are the limit.’ But she rose again and did as he asked, as she could now see something was wrong. She ran the cold tap, putting her wrists under the cool stream of water, and instantly felt better. Reaching for the milk, she asked, ‘Where’s Tommy?’
‘He went across to ask Pop about something.’ Danny was bending the truth a little – he’d sent his younger brother over the road with a question about spare parts for bikes. He knew that there was a strong likelihood Dolly would offer him something to eat and he’d be out of the house for a while. He didn’t want to share his news while his young brother was in the room.
‘So, then,’ said Kitty, setting down the teapot in front of him, ‘out with it.’ She pushed a stray dark curl out of her eye and sank back on to the chair.
Danny poured his tea, putting off the moment as long as he could. He slowly stirred it, adding a drop more milk to cool it down. He had no idea how his sister was going to react.
‘The thing is,’ he began, staring at the old table top. ‘I was called in to see Commander Stephens today. He asked me to go on a course.’
Kitty looked at him. ‘But that’s good, isn’t it? It shows that they rate you highly.’
Danny shrugged. ‘That’s as maybe. The trouble is, it’s not around here. It’s down south somewhere. An old house that’s been taken over. Bletchley something or other.’
‘Oh,’ said Kitty. ‘Will it be for long?’
‘Depends,’ said Danny. ‘I might not be any good, for a start.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t send you if they thought that,’ Kitty pointed out at once. She wasn’t taken in by that for a moment.
‘Then it looks as if it’ll be for several weeks, if not months,’ Danny said. ‘They wouldn’t tell me exactly. And now I’m wondering if this – ’ he pointed to the headline on the front page of the newspaper – ‘will mean we won’t be needed for much longer.’
‘Or it might mean you’re needed all the more,’ Kitty said. ‘We don’t know, do we? I don’t suppose they asked you if you wanted to go, did they? They’ll have told you it’s what you’ll be doing, like it or not.’
Danny raised his hands and let them fall back to the table. ‘Pretty well. Kitty, you know what it’s like as well as I do. They’ve decided that certain people with certain skills need to learn new ones, and I’m to be one of them.’
Kitty met his gaze. ‘Aren’t you flattered, just a bit?’ she asked. ‘I would be.’
Danny turned away. ‘Well, I suppose so.’ That was part of the problem. He knew he was good at what he did, and so it was pretty gratifying for that to be recognised, and to be singled out for special training. Nobody had helped him get to this position. He hadn’t had years of private schooling followed by university, unlike many of the others. He simply had the sort of brain that flourished when asked to solve strange puzzles. It was a source of great pride to him, as he was physically unable to serve his country in any other way. ‘But what about Tommy? He’s only just come home and begun that job. Now I’ll be leaving you in the lurch to look after him again.’
Kitty sighed. That was the first thing she had thought of too – how could she keep an eye on the boy when she worked all hours? Then she sat up straight. ‘We’ll think of something,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t worry about us. Tommy’s older now, and he’s got his work to keep him busy. He won’t have the time or energy to get into scrapes.’ She hoped this was true. ‘I can sort something out with Dolly or Rita if I’m on night shift. We’ve managed before, we can do it again.’
Danny’s face relaxed with relief. ‘Do you think you can, really? It would be a load off my mind if I knew that you two would be all right while I was away.’
‘Of course we will be,’ said Kitty, more sure now. ‘Look at how many other people get by – we’re lucky. Our house hasn’t been damaged, we’ve got friends and neighbours nearby, and both Tommy and I are working with money coming in.’
Danny nodded. ‘That’s true, of course. But I know we’ve only just begun to settle down as a family again, and now something else happens to turn everything upside down.’
Kitty’s expression was rueful. ‘That’s war, though, isn’t it? You never know what you’ll be called upon to do. Besides, it won’t be for ever.’
Danny got up, draining his tea. ‘Let’s go over and tell Tommy, and then Dolly and Pop can hear it at the same time.’
As he and Kitty reached for their jackets, he admitted to himself that they could tell Sarah too. He didn’t know what she’d think. He knew he’d miss her – their regular talks, the way she quietly helped out behind the scenes, how much he’d come to rely on her steady friendship as a constant in his day-to-day life. There was nothing to be done, though. He had to go.
Kitty ran her hands through her curls, shielding her face from Danny. She couldn’t let his news rattle her. Her thoughts had flown to Alfie and the sly way he’d looked at her. Danny wouldn’t be around to protect her from any more unwelcome threats from the horrible man. She’d just have to be careful. Anyway, that incident outside the station had been an accident; he hadn’t planned it, and she shouldn’t go worrying over something that most likely wasn’t going to happen. She certainly shouldn’t worry Danny about it. Their job now was to reassure Tommy. Kitty picked up her handbag and they headed out to break Danny’s exciting news to the others.
‘What time shall I meet you, Patty?’ asked the Wren with the tight brown curls, calling across the yard to her friend.
‘Better make it seven thirty,’ Patty shouted back, locking the door on the black car she’d been driving American officers around in all day. ‘Don’t suppose we need to ask you, do we?’ she said pointedly to Laura. ‘I dare say you’ve got something far better arranged for this evening. Whatever we do, it won’t be good enough for the likes of you.’ Without waiting for a reply she strode across the yard to Patty, little puffs of dust rising into the air from her brisk footprints.
Laura sighed but made no move to follow the two young women, now glancing back over their shoulders and laughing in a deliberate way so that they knew she’d see and hear them. They were trying her patience, but she wouldn’t let them realise how annoying she found them. That would be exactly what they wanted. They were being childish, and so she had to do the decent thing and act like an adult around them. She was barely older than they were, but she felt at least twice their age.
Shaking her head, she locked up her own car and began the tiresome walk back to her digs. The streets were very hot after the long summer’s day, but even so she preferred this form of transport to the crowded buses or the Underground. Heat rose off the paving stones in wavy lines, making her dizzy. She paused by a doorway. It had been bomb-damaged, like so much else around the area. Nearby windows were boarded up and there were gaps in the terrace towards the end of the road. She could see the exposed walls of the neighbouring house, and the bright colours of the wallpaper that would once have decorated the bedroom and living-room walls. She wondered what had happened to the family who’d lived there. Had they made it to a shelter on time? It always struck her as sad, thinking of someone choosing that pattern, painting the skirting boards, making a home for their children. Now it was open to everyone’s gaze.
Further along there was a doorway to the street set a little further back, and in the sunlight she couldn’t be sure if there was a figure in it or not. Yes, there was somebody. Maybe some poor soul who’d been bombed out, surveying the remains of a family home. As she approached, she saw it was a man; he straightened up from where he had been leaning against the doorjamb.
‘Laura!’ The voice was husky, as if he had been breathing in the dust that was everywhere. ‘I say, Laura! Over here!’
Laura stopped dead. A chill ran down her back despite the heat of the day.
‘Laura!’ The voice was louder.
She stared ahead. This couldn’t be happening; she was imagining things. Time seemed to stand still as she gazed in disbelief; all the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city faded into silence as she focused on the figure in the doorway.
‘Laura,’ the voice said again. ‘You aren’t seeing things, it really is me, Freddy.’
She ran forward towards him, suppressing a sob as she acknowledged that it was truly Freddy, that dear, familiar figure she’d known all her life. She tried to take in the changes in her handsome brother since last she’d seen him – he was thinner and standing not quite straight, his face etched with worry. His tousled hair was uneven, and did not quite fully mask a deep red scar on his head. Yet she would have known him anywhere. It was Freddy. It really was her long-lost brother Freddy.
She gasped as the full recognition hit her. ‘It’s you. It is you. Oh, good lord. I can’t believe it. It’s you, you’re here.’ She put out a hand to touch his arm, as if to make certain he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. ‘Oh, Freddy, where have you been? What’s happened to you? How did you get back? Are you all right? Your poor head. Do Ma and Pa know? How long have you been back?’
‘Steady on, old girl.’ Freddy’s face broke into an amused smile, revealing deep laughter lines at the corners of his eyes. ‘One thing at a time.’
She took in the sight of him, in his creased and faded blue shirt, trousers rolled up as if they weren’t his and didn’t quite fit, belt pulled tight because he was too thin for the waistband. This was not the dapper Freddy she remembered. What must he have been through to appear so changed? But she didn’t care. He was back; her beloved, aggravating, dearest brother was alive after all. She had dreamed of this moment but scarcely dared to hope it could ever come true. Now here he was, standing on the pavement of a residential street in northwest London.
‘Yes, sorry. Yes, of course. But all the same, how? When and what have you … no, I’ve a better idea,’ she said, trying to organise her tumbling thoughts. ‘There’s a decent pub around the next corner. Let’s go there. They’ve got a garden at the back and we can be cool there and you can tell me everything. Can you do that? Have you got time?’
He laughed. ‘As long as you’re paying. I’ve just about got what I’m standing up in at the moment. I’ll treat you next time, once they’ve sorted me out. I’m on my way to being debriefed – the War Office know I’m back, but I had to see you first before I’m sent back to my unit. I expect they’ll get all the information out of me first, before they give me a decent set of clothes and a bit of spare cash.’
He was smiling, but she could tell he was tired, that this was all a bit of an effort. She offered him her arm and together they rounded the corner and found the little pub, set back from the road, almost empty apart from a few older customers who had called in for a quick drink after their working day.
‘You go and find somewhere quiet to sit in the shade and I’ll get you a nice beer,’ she offered, but he gave her a look she remembered from their childhood that meant he wasn’t happy being told what to do.
‘I’m not quite an invalid, you know,’ he said mildly. ‘Can’t have a girl ordering the drinks, even if she is my stroppy little sister.’
Laura almost argued back out of deeply ingrained habit, but then could see that his pride would be hurt unless she gave way. So for once she didn’t press the point, but let him speak to the barman and carry the glasses out to the garden, where they saw that the table in the corner was free. She waited until he was seated comfortably before taking the wooden bench opposite. There was a gentle breeze blowing the leaves of the neatly trimmed privet hedge. She waited for a moment to see if he would start, but then her patience ran out. ‘Well? What’s happened? Where were you, when did you get back and how did you know where I’d be …’
‘All right, Laura, I’ll start at the beginning and tell you as much as I can remember,’ he said, giving way to the inevitable, ‘but I warn you, there will be gaps. You’ll have noticed I’m not quite the man I was, and there are some bits of the story I simply can’t remember. So go easy on me.’ He rubbed his hand across his face and blond hair, making more of it stick up.
‘Of course, of course,’ said Laura, eager to reassure him and to know more as soon as possible.
‘Well … I was sent on a mission to fly over France,’ he began haltingly. Then, as if the floodgates had opened, he described waking up in a field, his plane on fire beside him, faces staring down at him, speaking a language he could barely understand. The people had argued about whether to leave him, and some of them thought he was already dead. Then the one who appeared to be their leader came closer, realised he was still breathing, and ordered a piece of sacking to be fetched to use as a stretcher. He had been taken to a nearby barn. There he had stayed, he had no idea for how long. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness and had been so ill he hadn’t even worried about where he was or if he was safe.
That had come later, when slowly he had begun to stay awake for long enough to understand he was a problem for the people looking after him. Several women had brought food and water, and he had woken one day and noticed he was in clean but threadbare clothes, not anything he recognised as his own. He still didn’t understand much of what they were saying, but he was gradually catching more and more of it, piecing together fragments of their conversation with snippets that came back to him from lessons at school. But when he tried to think about his school, he couldn’t remember where it was or when he’d been there. He could remember almost nothing, in fact. Try as he might, he couldn’t even manage his own name. He became aware of the seasons changing, working out that he must have been hidden in that remote barn for months on end – if not longer.
Laura’s hand went to her mouth to stop herself from crying out. She knew she would have been terrified if such a thing had happened to her. It was unthinkable, her poor brother lying wounded and far from home, unable to do anything to help himself. ‘What happened then?’ she prompted gently.
‘Slowly, really slowly, I began to improve,’ he said. ‘I started to talk back to them in French. I tried to help them out in small ways. I could see they were taking a big risk in hiding me. If I had been discovered by the enemy, or if someone had betrayed my whereabouts, they could have been killed. I owe them my life. Once I was up and about, able to move on my own, I started to do things for them around the farm, but I still didn’t know who I was. One or two of them spoke a little English, and of course they knew I was British from my pilot’s uniform. They’d had to burn that – well, they said that it was pretty burnt anyway after the plane crash. They’d try to get me to talk about my past, but it was like there was a big curtain drawn across everything before that day.
‘I tried to ask where I was and they brought me a map. It was a very rough one, and of course all in French, but it made sense to me. Then I began to remember – not my name or where I was from, but that I’d been taught about maps.’
‘That makes sense, you must have done heaps of navigation training,’ Laura said, taking a drink from her glass. It wasn’t quite a cocktail from the admiral’s cabinet, but it would do. ‘Go on.’
‘It was very strange, the way all that detail returned but not the personal stuff,’ Freddy said, shaking his head slowly. ‘I told them what sort of things I’d learnt about and they began to ask me more and more. It became clear after a while that they wanted me to join them.’
‘Join them? Doing what? Being a farmer?’
‘No, silly,’ Freddy said with a familiar mix of affection and exasperation. ‘All right, I did do chores around the farm as so many of the young men who’d done the work before weren’t around any more.’
‘Just like home,’ said Laura.
‘But to be honest I wasn’t very good,’ he admitted. ‘I still had trouble walking properly – I’d taken this huge bash to the head, as you can see, and I’d been burned a fair bit. All that time of lying still had affected my muscles too. I could barely lift a spade to begin with.’ He sighed. ‘No, what they really wanted me for was my map reading and knowledge of navigation. They were with the Resistance, you see.’
Laura nodded. It made sense now. ‘So you stayed with them? Didn’t you want to try to get home?’
Freddy shrugged apologetically. ‘I might have, if I could have said where home was. But I honestly couldn’t. So I thought the best thing to do was stay with them and be of use that way. I didn’t know who to contact, and unless I stayed hidden I was a risk to them. So I kept below the radar, literally.’
Laura tried to understand what it must have been like, but it was a struggle. Part of her wondered if Freddy hadn’t really wanted to get back to his old life. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to let their parents or her know he was still alive and with the underground in France. Yet at the same time she told herself not to be so stupid. None of it had been his fault, and he’d ended up fighting the Nazis in a way that few others could have done.
‘It would have been almost impossible to have got me back to Blighty,’ he explained, sensing her concern. ‘I had no papers, nothing. Everything that could have identified me went up in flames in the crash, they told me. So bit by bit I became involved in their organisation, making new maps, advising them, that sort of thing, and doing some translation too when my French got much better. I’m pretty fluent now,’ he said with a grin. ‘One of the perks.’
Laura frowned. ‘What changed, then? Was it D-day?’
‘Things had been going our way for a while, but out in the countryside it was often hard to tell,’ he said. ‘Getting exact news was very hit and miss. But yes, finally the Allies got near and I knew it was safe to try to get home. My memory was returning and I could recall my name, where I was from, and what I’d been doing before that final mission. I even remembered I had a sister and that she could be a frightful pain.’
Laura punched him on the arm. ‘You deserved that,’ she admonished him. ‘So you sent me that note, then? How did you know where I’d be?’
Freddy lifted his pint of beer and took a long drink. He nodded. ‘This is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, I don’t mind telling you,’ he said. ‘Nothing beats a pint of proper beer. You should taste what they have in France. The wine is lovely but the beer, oh dear.’
Laura looked at him. ‘I’m sure you’re right. But go on, how did you know how to get that note to me? Why all the cloak-and-dagger business?’
Freddy glanced down as he set the pint back on the rickety table and his expression grew sheepish. ‘Actually, there’s a rum story behind it. One hell of a coincidence, you could say.’
Laura’s face was quizzical. ‘What was that? Freddy, out with it. I nearly went crazy when I got that note.’
Freddy’s face fell. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought you’d work it out. I didn’t do it to make you cross, it’s just that I had to be vague in order not to put anyone in the line of contact in jeopardy.’
‘All right, I see that. And I hoped it was you, I just didn’t know how it could have been. So what’s the coincidence?’
A faraway look came into his eyes. ‘It’s the most peculiar thing. I met someone who knew you.’
‘Knew me? In deepest France? How on earth …?’
‘She was one of us, she was brought in for a special mission,’ he explained. ‘It had to be her, she was one of only a few who could have done it as she spoke both German and French so well she could pretend to be either. She was pretty good, actually. Very impressive.’
Laura gasped. ‘That’s … no, it can’t be. Marjorie? You met Marjorie?’
Freddy nodded. ‘I know. How unlikely is that?’
‘Of all the Resistance cells in all the world,’ drawled Laura, but stopped when she realised Freddy didn’t have a clue what she meant. ‘Sorry. That is incredible, I can’t quite take it in. So you got to know her?’
That look came back into Freddy’s eyes again. ‘Yes, you could say that. Erm, quite well, actually.’
‘Freddy!’ Laura’s eyes widened. ‘No, you didn’t – you and Marjorie? Really?’ Yet, now she came to think of it, it had a certain rightness to it. Marjorie and her liking for blond airmen – many years ago she’d even danced with a Canadian who had a definite look of Freddy about him, which had shaken Laura to the core. This made sense in a totally impossible kind of way. ‘So she could tell you where I worked …’
‘Yes, and I confess we persuaded someone on the receiving end of some of our messages over here to seek you out and pass you a note,’ he said. ‘I realise it’s a roundabout way of doing things, but we couldn’t put the chain of information in danger. Your friend is a dab hand at signals, she could set up wireless transmissions and they’d be picked up over here. She really was terribly good at her job.’
Laura finally picked up on what he was saying. ‘Wait a minute. Was? Isn’t she any more? Freddy, is she all right?’
Her brother wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘The truth is, I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘The arrangements were all made to get me out at last. We got that message sent to you. I knew where to go to find you – I just had to wait near where you girls park your cars, and Bob’s your uncle. That part of the plan worked like clockwork.’ He seemed to be shaking a little. ‘What happened was, I was moved in the last few days, so I could get away more safely. I was in territory held by the Allies right at the end. But Marjorie was needed behind enemy lines, you see. So she went off on a new mission. And … we didn’t hear anything. We thought we would. That she’d get a message through of some kind. But nobody has heard.’
‘Oh, Freddy.’ Laura didn’t know what to say. It was bad enough to discover that her friend had made it as far as France and was excelling at her job, only to find something had gone wrong; but how much worse would it be for Freddy? Her brother, who had been through four years of unimaginable hell, had found a kindred spirit, only to lose her.
‘She might be all right,’ Laura said staunchly, knowing this was echoing what she had thought about Freddy himself all those long years. ‘She’s fearfully clever, Freddy. You never know.’
‘No,’ he said, looking away, but not before she’d noticed the tear in his eye. ‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? We don’t know.’