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“Oh, I see.” Lily glanced at Matthew, who was looking at her in concern. “Are you leaving right away?”
“In the morning,” Tom said. “Up to Lincolnshire until the invasion.”
“But they’ll be back to visit, won’t you?” Sophie turned to Tom with a bright smile. “You promised to take me to The Berkeley again, you know.”
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“And I will, of course I will,” Tom rejoined as he jangled some change in his pocket. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He smiled at Sophie, who smiled back, and Lily looked at Matthew, who said nothing.
So this was it, then. They were going. Perhaps they’d return, perhaps they wouldn’t. Lily knew it wouldn’t be the same, and she’d missed the opportunity to tell someone about the pigeons, the paper. She felt a treacherous relief, that it was out of her hands.
Then she remembered Matthew telling her he thought she’d be brave when it mattered. Now she knew she wouldn’t be.
“Do be careful,” she said, and Sophie called out for them to stand in front of the door. Lily watched them take their places, Matthew looking so very grave, and she felt a cry catch at her throat. This was goodbye. It felt too awful, too final. There was still so much she wanted to say, and it had nothing to do with that wretched little piece of paper.
The picture was taken and Carol and Richard came out to say their farewells, and Lily stood on the side and felt as if it were all happening to someone else. She met Matthew’s gaze and he smiled at her, and she tried to smile back but found she couldn’t.
And then they were leaving, with another round of shaking hands and a chorus of farewells, and through it all Lily found she could barely speak at all.
“I hope I see you again,” Matthew said, as he pressed her cold fingers against his own. “I’ll come back on leave, if… if you want me to?” His dark gaze moved over her face as if looking for answers.
“Yes,” Lily managed, and did not say anything more, although words—so many words—crowded in her throat and lodged in her mouth. Are you a spy? Do you care for me? Be safe. No matter who or what you are, I don’t want one of those awful letters to be written about you.
Then they were gone, swallowed up by the darkness of blackout London, and Lily stared after them disconsolately, hardly able to believe she’d stayed so silent.
Sophie flounced inside, edgy and restless, picking up a little vase on the hall table and then putting it down again with a clatter, before twitching away to the fireplace, and then flopping onto the sofa with a long, drawn-out sigh. Carol gave her a reproving look and went into the kitchen. Lily followed.
“Do you think Tom will visit you?” Lily asked as they were washing up after dinner. She meant it as a peace offering, a way to bridge the stilted silence that had emerged between them since the raid.
“Would you rather he didn’t?” Sophie retorted, thrusting a soapy plate at her so hard Lily nearly dropped it.
“Of course I wouldn’t.”
“Are you quite certain about that, Lily? Because sometimes I think you want the exciting things only to happen to you.”
This was so unfair, and so patently untrue, that all Lily could do was stare.
“Oh, I don’t mean it,” Sophie cried. “I know I don’t. I’m just so afraid, Lily. Tom… he’ll be parachuting down behind enemy lines. Can you even imagine? And he’s so brave, I know he’ll be right in the thick of the action. Sometimes I wish I were a man.” She spoke so savagely that Lily simply blinked. “Instead we just have to wait and wait and wait,” Sophie said in disgust as she picked up another plate. “And pour tea and say ‘chin up, duck’ and be so stupid. I can’t stand it. I really can’t.” She threw Lily a sudden, despairing look. “Do you know I envied you, being caught in the raid? Helping someone? I haven’t done a thing.”
“You and Tom were caught in a raid—”
“Snogging in a doorway! I should be ashamed of myself, I suppose.” Yet Lily knew she wasn’t.
“Do you think it will be soon?” she asked. “The invasion?”
“Who knows.” Sophie still sounded disgusted, and so very tired. “Who bloody knows.”
As February gave way to March and then April, a sense of expectation silently built but was not rewarded. The winter had felt long and dark and cold; February had been far colder than expected, and on the eighteenth of the month the British cruiser Penelope was torpedoed by a German submarine as it was returning to Anzio, with a loss of four hundred lives. Miss Challis hired another girl to help in the Casualties Section.
Yet, despite the losses—some of the worst of the war—hope began to unfurl, a tattered flag blowing in a determined breeze. In March, the border with Northern Ireland was closed, causing people to wonder why. Then, in the middle of March, General Eisenhower moved his entire headquarters out of London, and again whispers reigned—all rumor with no reality and no reward.
Every night, the Mathers huddled around the wireless, longing to hear anything other than the list of losses and the variable victories, wanting to hear John Snagge’s sonorous voice tell them that planes were flying over the Channel towards France, but it didn’t happen. Nearly five years on and everyone was still waiting.
Throughout those long months of lurching into spring, Tom wrote to Sophie sporadically, claiming he wasn’t “much of one for letters”; Matthew wrote not at all, which Lily tried not to take to heart.
“Perhaps he isn’t much of one for writing, either,” Sophie said, all sympathy now that she felt somewhat secure in Tom’s affections.
Lily gave a small, pinched smile. She did not think Matthew’s silence was due to lack of ability.
