CHAPTER 5 

March 1960

There was a jangling noise, loud and insistent. After two more rings, Hazel realized the noise came from the telephone on the kitchen wall.

She lifted the green plastic receiver from its cradle with a “Hallo.”

“Hazel, are you quite all right?”

Tim. He sounded worried.

“I am. Yes.”

A hot blush of fear rose on her neck. He already knew.

“You left without saying goodbye.” Silence, a beat she couldn’t read. “But I understand, my friend. I am terrible at goodbyes myself. And it’s not as if you’re really leaving. You’re still here in London. Just not here in the store.” He laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound as if he’d never done it before.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m terrible at farewells, you’re right. And a bit hungover from last night. The pub was the better goodbye, as it is.”

“Agreed,” he said. “The store was rushed with a tour group, and I didn’t even realize you’d left. We will miss you so very much. I know you have holiday but promise to tell us all about your first day at Sotheby’s, will you?”

“I promise. And Tim, I am so sorry.” She hesitated. This was her chance to confess what she’d done, to tell him that she’d carried the parcel through the back door, that she’d taken the portfolio by accident. Anyway, she’d return it tomorrow.

But she didn’t say a word.

“No need for apology. Be well, Hazel. London is changing so quickly, and I guess things are expected to change here, too.”

She hung up with a trembling hand. Yes, it was a new decade.

London was shifting beneath their feet, changing in ways she saw in quick flashes: music with a new beat, transistor radios, the crowds in Soho, the hemlines rising and the hair falling, the aristocrats mixing with the commoners on the street and in the pubs. Whispers of a drug blotted on tissue paper that could take anyone to a new world.

Londoners had finally come to believe there would be no more war. The brief respite between the first and second wars had trained them to wait for the next, but now, fifteen years later, they were relaxing, the divots and hollows of war being filled in with concrete and hope.

And Hazel, too, was moving on.

Until this.

All these years of keeping in touch with Chief Inspector Aiden Davies to make sure he didn’t forget Flora, the annual dig through the trunk in the hall closet to reread newspaper articles and relive the day to find a hint or clue she’d missed, and now this. She decided to write down every possible way this book might have been written by an American author, then found its way to Hogan’s Rare Book Shoppe.

She opened the pine hutch on the far wall of the kitchen and from the bottom shelf grabbed a robin’s-egg-colored notebook. It was one of the myriad notebooks that found their way into her home from almost every stationery shop and bookstore in London: blue and red, paisley and cream, palm-sized and large. They filled her cabinets, drawers, and countertops.

What she was meant to write in the notebooks she was never entirely sure, but there they were, blank and waiting for her when she was ready to use them. Her desire to write stories had been extinguished the day Flora disappeared, but that didn’t stop Hazel from buying these lovely notebooks. And that didn’t keep her from regularly heading straight from work along Charing Cross Road to Gerrard Street and into the Legrain coffee shop, where serious, studious writers gathered.

She wanted to be one of them, be one of the patrons who called themselves writers or authors. She wanted to be one of the women who wrote books that found their way to the shelves of libraries and bookshops. She wanted to be… an author. But it was a ridiculous dream, especially since she couldn’t even begin a story since the day Flora disappeared. The empty notebooks piled around her flat, the lists she made of ideas and to-do lists were the only remnants of her urge to put words to paper.

From the bottom shelf she picked up her green clay inkpot and her prized silver engraved nib pen. Then she carefully placed the illustrations in a pile at the far edge of the table. The top drawing, matching the cover of the book, glimmered under a vellum cover sheet.

She opened to the first unlined blank page, her pen lingering as an ink-tear dropped to the blank paper.

People who might know of Whisperwood:

1. 1. Harry Aberdeen
2. 2. Bridie Aberdeen
3. 3. Mum
4. 4.

Hazel closed her eyes and tried to remember who’d been near when she and Flora had whispered the story to each other. They had never told the story in a public place, so it couldn’t be kind Father Fenelly with his black shirts and white collar, or the pinched-faced teacher named Miss Slife, or the four wide-eyed nurses or the gentle pub master, Mr. Nolan, neither the teasing twins nor the awful frizzy-haired hag nor—

A knock on her flat door, and Hazel dropped the pen. She stood and walked into the living room.

Thank goodness it was Barnaby, with his wind-whipped black hair under his green felt cap, his kind blue-gray eyes, his cheery voice and sharp cheekbones, and the silver scar that ran along his left cheek that told a story of a bomb on his childhood street in Hampstead Heath. His parents had refused to send him away, taking their chances.

“Hello, love,” he said, hugging her close, nuzzling her neck with his stubbly dark beard. The man could grow a beard between breakfast and lunch.

“A nice surprise,” she said, kissing him.

She was a bit disoriented.

“Surprise? We are meant for dinner with your mum and stepdad in half an hour.”

“Oh no…”

“You forgot?” He tapped her nose.

“I did. Can we cancel? I’m not up for Mum and blowhard Alastair right now.”

He grinned. “I have no problem canceling.” Already he was unbuttoning his gray wool coat, hanging it on the peg by the door, plopping his cap on the bench to settle in.

“Make a drink,” she said. “And I’ll make the call. I have something to tell you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That sounds mysterious.”

“A story,” she said.

“My favorite.” He moved to the silver bar cart with the bottles of Macallan’s and Jameson, the Relsky and the Gordon’s glittering like jewels among the Waterford highball glasses.

Hazel went back into the kitchen and picked up the phone to call her mum, who would be unhappy at the change in plans.

---

London, 1957

Hazel arrived early at the white stone building on Bond Street: Sotheby’s Auction House. Just entering the famed establishment gave her a thrill. Inside she found the cavernous auction room with its open beamed ceilings of gleaming dark wood, a burlwood podium squatted at the front. Voices overlapped in the din.

A black canvas sign hung crooked on the wood-paneled wall to the left, declaring the auction for the day: RARE BOOKS, MANUSCRIPTS, AND AUTHOR MEMORABILIA.

Hazel registered at a long linen-covered table and took her paddle: Number 42.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” she mumbled as she sidled past others to an empty seat.

She wouldn’t buy anything. She never did. She didn’t have the money. But she did have enough love for books and manuscripts to want to see it all in person, to scope out anything Edwin might have missed.

Today there would be letters from Charles Dickens to Elizabeth Gaskill, a few original manuscript pages of The Hobbit, and—the most interesting—a silver engraved fountain pen from Virginia Woolf’s estate. It couldn’t be said what she wrote with it, but Hazel imagined the essay “A Room of One’s Own.”

The gavel banged on the pedestal and the room fell to silence. A tall man with a bald head, shiny under the overhead lights, called out, “Come to order. We’ll begin with item zero-six-zero on page two. A first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

The pages of auction brochures rustled, and the frenzy was on: paddles raised, voices calling out, bids placed while the room grew louder. A man arriving late sidled in on the left side of Hazel. He fumbled with his satchel, dropped it as papers fell out and scattered on the floor.

“Fuck,” he said. He cringed and bowed his head. “Sorry.” He shoved his papers back into his satchel and shook his head. “Bloody rotten train,” he said, then was fully focused on the brochure for a moment before turning his attention to the man at the podium.

Hazel stared at the silver scar running along his left cheek, wondering about its story. The man’s curly hair was brushed back with pomade, comb marks evident. She guessed early thirties, same as her, but she’d been wrong before. He wore a focused expression and had a chiseled chin. When he slanted his eyes in her direction, she looked away. She’d been caught staring.

She absolutely would not swoon over another man who would become shut up in another room down a long hallway of doors she always ended up closing—sometimes slamming. Another man whom she’d need to tell, “I’m just not ready for this.” Another man who’d want her to move in with him and take her away from Mecklenburgh Square.

He raised his paddle for a few items but never won.

“Do I know you?” she quietly asked him between artifacts.

“I don’t think so,” he said with a smile that radiated kindness. “I’m Barnaby Yardley.”

“I’m Hazel,” she said, and feeling like she had to explain why she was there, she added, “Hogan’s Rare Book Shoppe.”

“Ah, my father’s favorite.”

Then there it was: Virginia’s pen held high in the air by the man in the black gown. The author had lived on the same Bloomsbury square where Hazel lived now, yet Virginia Woolf’s apartment had been bombed and destroyed. Hazel thought of Virginia despondent and hopeless. In spite of the beautiful words she wrote she still filled her pockets with rocks and took herself to the River Ouse to drown.

Hazel’s paddle was in the air. She realized it only after she’d done it.

Then the man called Barnaby raised his as well.

On the next round of bids, she again raised her paddle.

So did he.

Hazel twisted in her seat and faced him. The only way she’d be able to purchase that pen was if her mum gave her more money. And she was determined that would never happen again. Even for Virginia Woolf’s pen.

Barnaby Yardley won the bid and Hazel stood, feeling deflated.

Once outside, a humid summer day pressed down on her shoulders and Hazel walked home with her hands in fists, her leather satchel bouncing against her hip. Who was that guy who’d purchased the pen she coveted? He was an ass. A prig. A man most likely with family money who’d no idea what it was like to scrape pounds together for the gas bill in winter.

Two days later, he arrived at Hogan’s Rare Book Shoppe. She was unlocking the cabinet to bring out a first edition of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for an order in America.

“Well, hallo there,” he said with a grin.

It took a moment for her to place him as he wore a gray felt hat pulled low on his forehead. A University of London crest was sewn on his jacket pocket.

A professor, she guessed.

She nodded at him but didn’t answer. She had books to shelve, messages to answer, an angry customer who’d bought a book with missing pages.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Excuse me?” She held the Orwell novel and backed away a few inches.

“Sorry for outbidding you.”

Ah, she realized, it was the dreamy dope from the auction. She waved the book, yet didn’t move.

He smiled. “It’s fascinating seeing the remnants of our literary heroes, isn’t it?”

“It is,” she said. “Like digging up fossils to see how things developed.”

“Exactly!” he said, and smiled so kindly that she felt warm.

An odd pause, then he asked, “Was there a particular reason you wanted that pen?”

Hazel tilted her head and really looked at the man. He seemed sincere. “I wanted it for loads of reasons, none of which are logical or intellectual. And it’s most likely best that I didn’t win it.”

“Tell me one reason you wanted it,” he said.

“Adeline Virginia Woolf once lived in the building next to me during the war, yet her building was destroyed and mine wasn’t. She once sat in that flat and wrote books. She tried to save her own life with words and she never was quite able to do so, eventually walking into a river and…”

Did he have a quick flash of tears? She wasn’t sure. He nodded. “That’s so sad, yet the world still has her work now.”

“That’s so true.” Hazel nodded, warming to him now, but hesitant. “What would it be like if we didn’t have To the Lighthouse.”

“Or Mrs. Dalloway,” he said.

From a room over, someone called Hazel’s name and she glanced backward and then looked to Barnaby. “I need to get back to work.” She couldn’t resist a parting shot. “Enjoy your pen.”

“Hazel, would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

Turned out he wasn’t an ass. Or a prig. He was a professor of British medieval literature. He was also from an aristocratic family who spent holidays in a run-down stone castle in Scotland where they hunted stag and grouse. In Hampstead Heath, the Yardleys owned a mid-eighteenth- century brown brick house with a rooftop overlooking London and a library where Barnaby’s father’s literary collection had grown to be one of the most famous in England. He’d bought quite a few books from Hogan’s.

It didn’t matter that she had every intention of resisting his charms. After a dessert of crème brûlée, he’d presented her with the pen in a blue velvet box. “I thought I was buying this for my father’s collection, but instead I was buying it for you.”

---

Barnaby stood at the brass bar cart in her living room, twirling a Waterford highball between his palms, lamplight catching the cut glass and amber whiskey. He smiled at her when she entered the room and handed the glass to her. “I have a feeling this story you’re set to tell me might need this.”

“It might,” she said.

They sat facing each other on the saggy flowered couch. Hazel leaned on the armrest and cradled her drink without taking a sip. “It’s about my sister,” she said.

His thick dark eyebrows rose, making furrows on his forehead, and he leaned forward. “Your lost sister. Is there news?”

“Of a sort.” Hazel shifted on the couch and set her whiskey on a dainty side table.

“Today I found a book. One that’s been released in America. A fairy tale.”

He nodded for her to go on. He knew about Flora, of course. Everyone did. There had been newspaper articles—the lost girl of Pied Piper who was never found, no matter how many search parties went out, no matter how many times they dredged the river. The tale of Flora had become a ghost story, an Oxford, Binsey, and Bloomsbury legend.

But Hazel had never told Barnaby the full truth. She’d never told anyone the full truth. Not even Kelty. She closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temples. Opening her eyes, she looked at the man she loved so very much and started again.

“When Flora and I were children,” she said, “fourteen and five years old in 1939, England had just declared war on Germany. London was on edge. Papa had already been… was already gone… you know, the training accident.” She cringed. “And then Flora and I were sent to the countryside to live with strangers.”

“Yes, darling, I know.” Barnaby took her hand.

“Well, I’d tell Flora stories to keep her happy, to distract her.”

“Fairy stories? Like of the wee folk?”

“Not exactly. It was more, like, an endless story, an imaginary land for the two of us. Whisperwood and the River of Stars was only ours.”

“Whisperwood?”

She cringed at the dip in the tone of his voice. Barnaby was hurt that she’d never told him about any of this. Hazel was well attuned to disappointment in others. She picked up on any and all ways she didn’t please someone.

“Yes, and, Barnaby, Whisperwood is also the name of this new book written by an American author named Peggy Andrews. It’s not just the title that’s similar, so is the actual land and parts of the story.”

“Oh, Hazel, honey, you think this author might be your sister?”

She stared at him and saw it, as evident as a lighthouse in fog: pity. Pulling away her hand, she sat straighter. “I don’t know what to think. But I want to know how our story made its way to America. I’m confused… no one knows this tale. What if—?”

“What if she’s alive,” he finished for her.

Hazel nodded but barely, reluctant to let in too much—or any—hope. Still, while Barnaby stared at her, her wish seemed to grow, the thrill of the idea that Flora might be alive, an incredible ending to a long saga.

“This is stunning,” he said, “but can you be sure no one else knew the story? Not the woman you lived with or the boy or—”

“Bridie and Harry,” she interrupted. “No. They never knew about Whisperwood.”

“You’re sure?” He scooted across the couch to take her hands once more. He ran his thumb across the top of her hand.

“I am mostly sure.”

“I’m trying to see where you are going with this. Do you think that if you track down this author you’ll find Flora or perhaps learn what happened to her?”

“It occurred to me. Yes.”

“Maybe you should finally call that woman who writes the lost children articles. Maybe she can help.”

“Dorothy Bellamy? Are you serious? She romanticizes these lost children. She writes fluff pieces for the younger, professional woman.” Hazel mocked the tagline and rolled her eyes. “How in the hell would it help to tell her this?”

“I don’t know. She’s a reporter, right? Did you ever talk to her?”

“No, and I won’t. She can write me ten thousand more letters or call Aiden Davies a million more times.” Hazel shook her head. “For God’s sake, Barnaby, she calls Flora ‘The River Child.’ I don’t want Flora to be some doomed legend, some Juliet or Isolde. I want her to be alive.” Hazel paused because she knew what Barnaby was thinking. “She is not the child they found in the river near Wallingford in 1956. That was not her. I don’t care what they say—they never positively identified that body as her. All they know is that it was a skeleton of a five- to six-year-old female. There was no way to look for distinguishing marks.”

“Like bunny ears,” he said with compassion.

“Yes.”

Logic might insist it could be Flora’s remains, that she’d floated undetected in marsh and tides to settle there, but Hazel refused to believe it.

“I want anything you want, I do,” said Barnaby, “but I bet a great many people knew this story of yours. The adults around you? The teachers? Your mum? I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much. The survival of a story is not the same as the survival of your sister.”

“Thank you, professor,” Hazel said, a bite of anger in her voice.

“Whoa, there. Don’t take this out on me. It’s only a book, a fairy tale.”

“Which one is a fairy tale, Barnaby? The one about finding Flora, or the book by Peggy Andrews? Because either way, it is never, ever only a fairy tale.” She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh. She lowered her voice. “You think it’s a coincidence, don’t you? What you’d call synchronicity. The universal unconscious, I know. All of that is well and good in theory but I am currently faced with this one thing, Barnaby: This story could be mine. It could be Flora’s. Surely that must mean something.”

“Oh, Hazel.” He held her close and she smelled the woody aroma of cigarettes that infused all his clothes. He pulled back and kissed her softly. “They bloody well called the scheme Operation Pied Piper. Not very well thought out when you consider what happened to the children in the Grimm’s fairy tale.” He stood and walked to the bar, poured himself another finger of whiskey.

“I know.” She took a swallow of her own whiskey, the warmth flowing down. How could she explain to Barnaby how it had all felt; how it felt even now to know she’d lost her sister. The dread. The panic. The jealousy of other people having small children at their side. How she’d awaken with a pounding heart knowing she lost something but for a sacred few moments not remembering what it was. The despair eased through the years, but not much. As she grew older, nothing quelled the memories: not liquor, not men, not stories or books or the distractions of friends and parties.

At twenty-five years old, she’d realized that all she could do with the ache and the shame was to live with it, allow it to walk next to her like a shadow, a ghost, a living memory. Some days, she’d turn to that loss and acknowledge it, and sometimes, for blessed hours, she would forget, but then the shadow would fall long and fast onto her soul and she’d remember this: She lost her sister. “Watch out for each other” would echo down the long halls of her heart and she’d shudder as she did now.

“Do you have the new book here?” asked Barnaby.

“I do.” She stood and took his hand, leading him down the narrow dark blue hallway to the sunny room in back, which smelled of tea, rosemary, and a tinge of lavender from the potted plants on her windowsill, a scent memory of Binsey.