57 “london, dear old london”

This train ride was full of memories. I had only ever taken it with a full heart—going home to my mother’s funeral, or leaving Sydney behind, or to and from the war. It wasn’t transport, it was a journey of the soul, and each ride meant the difference between life and death.

We were all quiet, with tiredness, with tension, with the kind of emptiness that always found me after battle. Soon the farmland turned to coast, the clack of wheels replaced with the relentless pounding of waves as we boarded the ferry. All I could think of was my mother. How had she felt about this crossing? When she was young, was it a return to her gilded cage or was it another part of her bohemian adventure? How had she felt about it as a mother, when this crossing was the first step away from her true life and back to Australia and me? I must have looked appalling, as Bertie nodded to Tom, who took off my hat to massage my head, while Bertie took off my shoes to massage my feet. I fell asleep quickly and didn’t wake until the clangs and yells and big-city buzz of Victoria Station.

London was much as it had been a few weeks ago, as it always was: ever-changing, secure only in its sense of being the center of the world. A spiky place, a place where around every corner was someone waiting to overset my life, whether that was Fox, my aunt Petunia, my editor, Tom’s editor, or more besides whom I had never met but could tell me that my mother was not who I thought she was, that Tom would suddenly be whisked off to the other side of the world, that I was never allowed back to Paris. I loved hearing the newspaper boys and flower girls, I wanted a sweet bun and a hot cup of tea, but other than that I didn’t want to be here. It was the antithesis of home.

“I’m coming with you to Westminster,” said Tom, looking firmly out the window at the steel of the station. The train squealed as we pulled into the platform.

“Yes, you need backup,” said Bertie.

“It’s best if I’m by myself.”

“You can’t be serious, Button.”

“Kiki, are you going to turn up to Westminster at dawn, scruffy and smelly, on the off chance that Fox is walking around with your mother’s diary?” Bertie raised an eyebrow.

“I have to go alone.” The train screamed as it let off more steam, a fog outside the glass. “Tom, Bertie… trust me.”

Both men looked at me, Bertie appraising in his pressed caramel check suit, Tom glowering in his worn navy one. The conductors rattled along the corridor, opening our cabin door with a brisk apology, forcing us out and onto the concrete platform with everyone else.

“We trust you, Kiki darling.” Bertie straightened his shoulders and put on his hat. “Very well. I’m going home to my little boat for a moment of peace before I go in to see Sir Huffandpuff Himself and beg for a darkroom… and an assistant, as I’ve never in my life developed a photo.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “But come and see me when you’re done. We can look through some of the photos of the Casati party and write the copy together. Tom—share a cab?”

Tom looked at me for a long time, his posture as tired as his suit. “I’m just supposed to leave you here at the station? After all that’s happened in the last few days?”

I pulled down his face to kiss each cheek.

“Go with Bertie. I’ll call you at work in a few hours.”

I watched them walk off down the platform, Tom looking back over his shoulder every few steps. I would have to follow them of course, there was only one way onto the concourse, but I needed to give them some distance. I needed the distance from them in my mind, to prepare myself for the thing I most dreaded: Fox. How else was I going to do it—get the diary, ask why he has it, berate him about Tom—except face-to-face? It was not a face I wanted to face, and my fear of him made me perversely want to run to him, to stand in front of his face, and my fear, and slap it. I couldn’t have Tom or Bertie nearby when I did this. I had to do it alone.

Travelers clipped along in a very British manner, purposeful even when they were only walking to sit and wait. Trains grunted and huffed away. The station was all action, gearing up to the main part of the day when dozens of trains would leave Victoria for all over the country. I was wearing my favorite high red brogues, I couldn’t seem to take them off. I strode toward the entrance, my thoughts flicking over details of the day’s organization: I would check my suitcase into the luggage room, I needed the toilet and a cuppa, I had no idea where I was going to stay tonight, or if I would be finished by lunchtime and be on the train home this afternoon…

“Miss Button?” A man in a smart gray suit approached me, light gray eyes in a pale face, wreathed in gray smoke.

Who knew that I was here? Was this one of Charlie’s fascist friends, come to take revenge? I kept walking.

“I have been asked to give you this.” He gave no name, but before he opened his coat, he stubbed out his cigarette, his black, gold-tipped Sobranie. I stopped at the sight of it. No, it couldn’t be, Fox couldn’t already know I was here… The man held out a little package wrapped in brown paper and string. It looked very much like a book, it weighed about as much as a book, but before I could ask him about it, he nodded and left.

Surely that couldn’t be it, that couldn’t be everything. I looked in the direction he was walking. A broad-shouldered man stood by the station entrance, his overcoat perfectly fitted, his steel hair slicked perfectly in place, a scar on his cheek—Fox. No; the world paused for a moment, it held its breath. Then I grabbed my suitcase and ran toward him. The man smiled ever so slightly as I hopped, skipped, jumped through the crowds. He turned on his heel in a military manner and turned round a corner. I had no time to apologize to the people I knocked with my bag, I could only clutch the parcel and head after him. I found the spot where he had stood, I turned the same corner—was that him, that silver helmet, that upright bearing? I plunged after the man but it wasn’t him—another gray head under a gray hat turned down the stairs to the Underground. I pushed forward, my suitcase flailing behind—but I caught his profile and it wasn’t Fox either. I whirled around, I moved quickly to every corner and behind every cart, I ran up the street and then down again, but I couldn’t see him. If it had been Fox, he was now gone.

Why was this the thing that made me want to give up? It was all I could do not to sit in the gutter and cry. It took all my presence of mind to head back into the station, to turn my frustration to action and work out what to do next. Fox had seen me, I was sure of it, and I had seen him as well. I closed my eyes and clutched the parcel. Where would he go now? I headed straight to the public telephone booth and rang reverse charges.

“I’m sorry, miss, but he won’t be in the office today or for the rest of the week. May I take a message?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Button, he did not stay in the club accommodation last night. I will inform him that you rang.”

“Yes, this is Greef… Miss Button, excellent to hear from you again. He is not here at present… No, I couldn’t say where he was, but I will take… As you wish, Miss Button. I hope to see you again soon.”

He wasn’t at work, or at his club, or his home in Mayfair. He had disappeared, vanished somewhere, I felt, just so he could reappear and terrorize me once again. How did he know just how much to give and to withhold to keep me on tenterhooks, ready to do anything for him if only to relieve my frustration? My clothes were sticky from the sweat of sudden running. My feet hurt from skipping on hard floors in high heels. My head hurt from sleeping on a train, from too many cigarettes, from holding back tears. My leg throbbed, my wound seared, my throat was raw. There was nothing I could do now, except what that bastard had given me permission to do.

I could only read the diary.