‘Have you lost your mind?’ Cynthia’s hands gripped the edge of the Formica kitchen table so tightly Evelyn thought it might break.
Next to her, their younger sister Maureen sat frozen, fingers twined around a teacup she wasn’t drinking from.
Evelyn swallowed. ‘No, Cynthia. I’ve given this a great deal of thought—’
‘Obviously not,’ her sister snapped. She glared at Maureen. ‘Can you believe this?’
‘It is rather shocking.’
‘Shocking? It’s downright distasteful. It’s … it’s obscene!’
‘Cynthia.’ Evelyn tried to make her voice sound a warning, but it was half-pleading.
‘Come now, Evelyn,’ Maureen said. She gave up on her tea, pushing the cup and saucer away. ‘You have to admit this is an unconventional idea.’
‘Stop tiptoeing around her like that,’ Cynthia said. She pushed herself off the table and walked over to the sink so rapidly the skirt of her brown dress swung around her calves. Grabbing an already clean glass, she began to scrub it furiously. ‘I won’t allow it, Evelyn. I won’t let you bring shame on our family. A woman going out on her own with a bunch of immoral strangers. Who knows what kind of trouble you’d get yourself into.’
‘I’m sorry, Cynthia.’
She really was. This was one of the last times she’d be with her sisters before she joined the Victory, and she didn’t want to leave on an argument.
‘Sorry?’ Cynthia slammed the glass down and turned to face her again. ‘If you were sorry you wouldn’t go. But it doesn’t matter, because as I said, I won’t allow it. I’m the matriarch of this family now, and you do not have my permission to go.’
‘I don’t need your permission.’
For a moment, there was silence. Evelyn caught Maureen’s eye; she looked frightened.
‘You don’t?’ Cynthia hissed. ‘I see. So all you care about is yourself. You’re going to leave your sisters, and your nephew, to go gallivanting off to some godforsaken country and parade around like a common harlot. What will happen to Spencer? Who’ll help him get to and from school when he starts, and sit with him while he does his homework? If the boy becomes a failure it will be your fault.’
Evelyn shook her head. It sent a sharp pain through her to have her sister use Spencer against her. She loved the little boy almost as if he were her own, and it was the thought of leaving him that had nearly stopped her taking Humphrey Walsh up on his unexpected offer of a new life. Now, hearing the same concerns she’d tossed and turned over coming from her sister’s mouth, Evelyn doubted herself all over again.
The truth was, she was scared. After a life of doing what was expected of her, leaving to help a group of strangers better their law-breaking performance just so she could do the kind of work she craved again … It was madness.
It was also freedom.
When she thought of that strange boat, a suffocating weight lifted from her. She had never expected an opportunity for escape, but it had come; an exhilarating, terrifying, incomprehensible opportunity. She had to take it. If it all went wrong—well, at least she’d know and could stop trying to fill that empty space in her soul, stop avoiding the life she, as a woman, was supposed to want.
But Spencer … her sweet boy who had made her days bearable. How could she part from him?
‘He’s not my child,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s yours. You’ll do those things for him.’
‘And when would I have the time?’ Cynthia began. But she was interrupted by a high-pitched wail.
All three sisters turned to look at the doorway. Spencer had dirty fingermarks on his shirt from whatever he’d been eating, and his knee-high socks had fallen around his ankles. His face was red and crumpled.
‘You hate me!’ he cried, his voice sticking into Evelyn like a knife. She moved towards him, but he shook his head and stamped his feet. ‘You hate me and you’re leaving and I’m going to be all alone. Well, I hate you too. I hate you!’ And he whipped around and ran from the room.
‘See what you’ve done now?’ Cynthia snapped. The kettle on the stovetop began to whistle, a shrill sound in sympathy with Spencer’s cry. ‘I hope you’re happy with yourself and your selfish choices.’
She snatched the kettle from the hob and turned the stove off with a sharp twist of her wrist. Her flat shoes made squeaking noises as she stalked across the spotless floor, going to comfort her son.
Evelyn blinked a few times to rid herself of tears.
‘She’s right, you know,’ Maureen said, pushing back her chair and taking her teacup to the sink. She turned the tap on, careful not to disturb the milk that was keeping cool in the half-filled tub, and rinsed the cup and saucer. ‘She might not have the best way of putting it, but that doesn’t mean what she’s saying isn’t right. Think how much hurt you’re causing other people. And for what?’
‘For a life.’
Maureen shook her head. ‘You have a life. One everyone else manages to be grateful for. Why can’t you?’
It was the same question Evelyn had often asked herself, and she had no answer.
Maureen left, and Evelyn sank down on a chair, alone in the kitchen of the house she’d lived in for years. A house that had never felt like a home to her. She wondered if she really would have the courage to leave it.
In the end, she almost didn’t. But the fear of drowning in the sameness of a life she’d never been able to resign herself to made her pack her bags.
The morning of Evelyn’s departure, Cynthia stayed inside her bedroom with the door closed. Spencer had slept in there the previous night, under his mother’s instruction, so as to prevent Evelyn saying goodbye to him this morning. Charles had whispered an apology to Evelyn before leaving for work, but even his fury hadn’t coaxed Cynthia out of the room.
Evelyn tapped on the closed door. ‘I wish I could find the words to make you understand, Cynthia,’ she murmured. ‘I know the life you envisioned for me. But how can I be a wife and mother with all I’ve seen and done? Those experiences change a person. You can’t go back to who you were before, with the same expectations of the future.’
She sighed, her palm resting on the painted wood. Was that movement inside the room? She held her breath, but nothing else came.
‘Please make sure Spencer always knows how much I love him,’ she said finally, then picked up her bags and left her family. Swapping comfort and security for an unknown life.
Humphrey Walsh had told Evelyn that someone would pick her up on the shore at Battersea. It turned out to be Flynn, the dark-haired American who worked the sound equipment as well as the lights.
Evelyn was afraid he would be put out at having to share his job, but instead found him enthusiastic to share the burden. His knowledge of stage lights seemed even less than hers.
‘Would you like to see the junior switchboard?’ he asked as soon as they’d clambered on board.
Evelyn still had her bags in her hands but didn’t point this out. She’d never seen a switchboard in person before and was excited at the prospect. It was tucked at the base of a mast and looked something like a tall radiator.
‘It’s a portable,’ Flynn explained, ‘so we can move it out of the reach of bad weather and salty sea air between shows.’
Evelyn marvelled over the dials and switches that controlled many, although not all, of the lights they had on board. She desperately wanted to try out the four slider dimmers on the lower half of the unit. She’d read about them; and on questioning, Flynn admitted they weren’t used as much as they should or could be. By the uninterested tone of his voice it seemed he didn’t have the same passion for lights as Evelyn did. She wondered why he had chosen this life and this work if he didn’t love it. As a man, and one who seemed untouched by the war, he could have had just about any job he wanted. It wasn’t her position to ask though, so Evelyn kept her lips together as she poked around the switchboard.
Eventually, Humphrey Walsh appeared before them wearing a gold lace eyepatch. ‘I admire your enthusiasm, Evie, but I think we should get you settled in your new quarters before you get lost among the lights.’
‘Of course,’ she said, and turned to Flynn. ‘Thank you. I suppose I’ll be seeing you again shortly … I mean, if we’re both going to be working on the lights?’
He just shrugged, and jammed his hands in his trouser pockets as he walked away.
Evelyn glanced at Humphrey Walsh, who didn’t seem to find anything odd in the other man’s silent departure. He simply said, ‘Come on now, below deck.’
She was given a tiny cabin to herself. She thought it might have once been a storage cupboard of some sort, but was glad of its privacy. She was spreading the pink and green tartan counterpane she’d brought on the bed—trying to ignore the strange sensation of seeing her old home and her new one overlap—when a whirlwind of performers and crew jammed into the small space.
A series of names went along with the handshakes and occasional air kisses—an overwhelming blur of noise and colour that only stopped when they crowded out in the hall around her doorway, grinning as though waiting for something.
The boat began to thrum, readying to move down the Thames and away from London. Evelyn experienced a moment’s panic. Could she do this? Could she really leave everyone she knew and loved?
Displaying the perfect timing of his act, Alvin appeared, holding out a parcel wrapped in brown paper to distract her.
‘A welcome gift for you,’ he said. ‘From all of us.’
‘Open it,’ other voices cried.
By their amused tones Evelyn was afraid she was about to become the victim of some kind of practical joke, but she tore away the brown paper anyway.
‘Why, what is this?’ she asked.
Folded inside the paper was dark, thick fabric. When she held it up, it unravelled to reveal a siren suit—the kind worn by women who’d worked in factories during the war. This one, however, bore a smattering of sequins across the shoulders.
‘For working in,’ Alvin said. ‘Some of the girls decorated it so you’ll match the performers. Now you’ll really be one of us.’
A cheer went up, and Evelyn was embarrassed to feel her eyes misting. She held the siren suit close to her chest, the sturdy fabric reminding her of her 93rd Searchlight Regiment uniform. Memories flooded back with such clarity she could have sworn she’d somehow travelled back in time. She could smell the nervous sweat of unwashed bodies—a rarity in women’s worlds before and after the war; feel the weight of the pickaxe handle in her hand; taste the enamel of the army-issued mug. She tried to swallow the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat.
‘Okay, folks, let’s let the lady settle in,’ Alvin said. ‘Where’s Flynn got to? He owes me a game of poker.’
Evelyn couldn’t be sure if Alvin was hustling everyone off because he’d seen her tears, but she was grateful all the same.
As the crowd dispersed she closed her cabin door and laid the siren suit out on her bed, admiring it for a moment. Then she rummaged in one of her bags until she found a crumpled handkerchief.
She unfolded the white cotton and touched her fingertip to the 93rd Regiment grenade collar badge that sat within. It had stayed hidden in her bedside drawer for years, only ever being taken out in the dead of night when she was sure Cynthia wouldn’t catch her staring at it.
Now, she pinned it to the siren suit, among the sequins. Here she didn’t have to hide the person she used to be—the person she longed to be again. Here, as Evie, she could be anyone she wanted to.