CHAPTER 29

LONDON

MAY 2019

I sat next to Colin and his parents in the well-appointed waiting room at Princess Grace Hospital in Marylebone. It was a strangely soothing room with tasteful furniture and an appealing lack of clown paintings and other medical office art on the quiet silver-gray walls. The absence of cracked orange vinyl chairs and linoleum tiles made it easier to pretend that I wasn’t in a hospital. If it weren’t for the worried faces of Colin and his parents, I could have easily imagined I was anywhere else.

Arabella had called for the ambulance after Precious collapsed. She had been breathing, and conscious, but not entirely lucid when they’d placed her in the ambulance. I kept asking every medical professional we encountered if she would be okay, the reality that she might die hitting me with a force I hadn’t expected. I knew she was old, and I couldn’t completely forget Precious telling me that being old was her punishment. But it was still too soon. Her story was not yet completely written.

Colin looked at his watch again, the third time in thirty minutes. “I wish they’d tell us something more conclusive than that she’s stabilized and sleeping comfortably.”

“They said they’d let us know as soon as she wakes,” Penelope soothed. “Although it’s quite late. She might sleep until morning. You two should go home and get some rest.”

“Just a while longer,” Colin said. “In case she wakes up and needs reassurance.”

Penelope smiled at her son. “Your father and I are here—and we promise to call you when she awakens. You should have left with Arabella. You both have to be at work in the morning, and there’s nothing you can do here.”

“I’d like to wait, too,” I said.

Penelope tapped her index finger against her chin. “Did you notice any mental confusion prior to her collapse?”

I thought for a moment. “Earlier in the day she had put on an old evening gown and was frantically looking for that photograph of Graham and not making a lot of sense. She calmed down once we found it. And last night she was reciting poetry from memory—a Wordsworth poem.” I frowned. “But she also said something strange. When I asked her what took her so long to come back to London, she said she waited until she was ready to face her past.”

Penelope frowned. “Whatever could she have meant by that?”

“I have no idea. She went to sleep right afterward, so I couldn’t ask her.” And then I threw myself on your son and forgot all about Precious. I looked away, feeling the heat rising up my neck.

Colin’s father stood and began pacing, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I remembered from school that Colin had done the same thing when we’d been studying together, saying it helped him think.

“What was the name again? The name Precious said,” James asked. “Was it Alec?”

“Alex. I think she was referring to Alexander Grof. I saw his name in some of the captions of pictures from The Tatler. He was photographed several times with Precious at several social functions. He was at Sophia’s wedding, too.”

James nodded slowly, silently contemplating. I studied him, wondering again what it was that was so familiar to me about him. “Any idea who he was?”

I shook my head. “She had quite a large social circle, so someone from her ‘set,’ as they used to call it.”

Penelope looked up from a magazine she’d been flipping through. “I don’t remember Sophia ever mentioning him, so he might have been just a hanger-on. The gossip pages aren’t always the best source for determining who’s actually a friend.”

“True,” I said. “Although if he wasn’t important, why was he Precious’s last conscious thought before she collapsed?”

“That’s a very good question,” Penelope agreed. “And one that we can all contemplate tomorrow after we’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

“I think you’re right. I’m so bleary headed, I feel like a bagel in a bucket of grits.” I stood, vaguely aware of Colin suppressing a laugh as his parents stared at me. “Just promise you’ll call.”

Penelope stood, too, and kissed me on the cheek. Then she faced her son. “Colin, please, make sure Maddie gets home safely?”

“I’m fine, really,” I said. “If you want to go out with friends or whatever, I can find my way back on my own.” I’d avoided meeting Colin’s eyes the whole night, replaying over and over in my head the events of the previous evening. I had almost called Aunt Cassie for her advice, had reached for my phone multiple times before I talked myself out of it. Because she would only tell me what I already knew—that I was confused and unsure, not willing to let go of a lifetime’s worth of self-denial and a strongly held belief that my life had a known outcome and a specified number of years assigned to it. She would have couched it in different terms, though. She would have just called me an idiot.

Colin was already moving toward the exit. Not wanting to argue in front of Penelope and James, I said my good-byes and followed him out into the cool spring evening.

“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” he said, already looking for a taxi, striding ahead with his hands shoved into his pockets.

I rubbed my hands on my bare arms. It had been warmer in the afternoon when we’d rushed Precious to the hospital, and I was wearing a sleeveless blouse.

“Here,” Colin said, slipping his sweater over his head and handing it to me. “I remember you always being cold and never having the proper clothing. It must be an American thing.”

He wore a long-sleeved shirt underneath, so I didn’t feel guilty accepting the sweater. “Probably more of a Southern thing,” I corrected. I pulled the sweater over my head, feeling his body heat against my bare skin, smelling the clean, soapy scent of him that clung to the fibers. I resisted the impulse to bury my nose in the knit and breathe deeply. The sleeves were way too long, and I let them dangle.

“Can we walk back?” I asked. “I’m exhausted, but it’s not that far. I need to clear my head.”

“Yes, that bagel in a bowl of grits must be difficult to overcome.”

I gave him a playful elbow in the ribs, and he groaned with exaggerated pain.

“Sure,” he said, falling into step beside me as we made our way to Marylebone Road.

We walked in silence as I breathed in a lungful of air, trying to calm my racing thoughts. I loved London’s deep purple sky on clear nights, the city’s glow creating a bruised halo on the horizon. But over Regent’s Park, where there was no competition from artificial lights, I could see the stars.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” I asked, finally voicing the thought that had been pecking at my head since we’d rushed Precious to the hospital.

“She’s almost one hundred, Madison. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that it’s simply her time. And believe me, I hate saying that as much as you probably hate hearing it.”

I swallowed, nodded. “She told me she went to France to escape her ghosts. And that living this long has been her punishment. I’m not sure what to make of that.”

I felt him looking at me, but I didn’t turn my head. “Neither am I. I’ve never heard her say that.”

“I’m wondering if bringing up all these old memories hasn’t been good for her health.”

“Arabella said the same thing.” A car passed by, the sound of an orchestra pealing out from an open rear window, then fading as the car sped away.

“Do you agree?” I asked.

“No. I actually think Nana’s relieved. It’s cathartic. You seem to have given her a new purpose, something to achieve before she dies.”

Now I did look at him. “How have I become something for her to achieve?”

“Well, imagine living most of your life holding on to some burden, something for which you believe you need to be forgiven. You plan on taking it to your grave. And then, just when you think it’s too late, you see the opportunity to unburden yourself. To perhaps make dying not so hard to contemplate.”

“But she could have chosen anyone—you or Arabella, for instance.”

“True. But maybe she chose you because you’re blood related. Or she just saw an opportunity to help someone avoid the same mistakes she’s made.”

I stopped walking and faced him. “Just stop right there. Regardless of what Precious does or doesn’t think, you can’t make assumptions. You know virtually nothing about me.”

A cool breeze lifted the hair from his forehead, making him look somehow boyish. Vulnerable. “I know you more than you think.”

I turned away and resumed walking, faster than before. “We’re not talking about this now.”

“Later, then?”

I shook my head vigorously. “No.”

“All right. But can we talk about something else? We have about eight blocks to go.”

“Depends—about what?”

“I didn’t get to tell you earlier because of what’s happening with Nana, but Mother heard from Hyacinth Ponsonby. About Graham. We found him post–nineteen forty.”

I slowed down. “And? Where was he? What was he doing?”

“Do you want the official title or what he was actually doing?”

“They’re not the same thing?”

“Not exactly. After Graham was shot down over the Channel, his injuries prevented him from returning to the RAF, so he secured a position in the War Office. He was assigned to work in the map room in Churchill’s basement war rooms.”

“How did he do that? Doesn’t a person have to know someone to jump from flying planes to that sort of position?”

“Well, he came from an aristocratic family, but you’re right. One doesn’t ‘get a job’ at the War Office without some sort of background. Or, as you said, knowing someone. Apparently, Great-uncle Graham had both. Hyacinth, bless her, did some digging into his life before the war. She discovered that he read Persian and Arabic at Christ Church, Oxford—apparently he was quite proficient with foreign languages; his government files show that he spoke at least six, including German.” He raised his eyebrows at this last. “He also learned to fly at Oxford, as a sort of hobby, I suppose. Following Oxford, he joined the Diplomatic Service and was sent to Burma. He also flew while he was overseas. His earlier training meant he was able to jump through some of the basic RAF training requirements. He flew his first mission—reconnaissance, not actual fighting—in December nineteen thirty-nine, after joining the RAF in July of that year.”

“Smart guy or a fast learner?” I asked.

“Most likely both. I am related to him, after all.”

I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh, and rolled my eyes. “That was his official position. But what was his real role post–nineteen forty?”

He turned to me and grinned. “It’s what we suspected.”

I stopped in the middle of the deserted sidewalk, making Colin stop, too. “Get out! MI-Six? Like James Bond?”

“Close. MI-Five. Roughly speaking, MI-Six were our spies overseas, whereas MI-Five operatives were here in England looking for their spies. Graham’s ‘cover,’ so to speak, was the War Office.”

“Wow,” I said. “I didn’t expect that. Although . . .” I smacked my forehead, remembering the box of purses. “Was one of the languages he knew Czech?”

“I believe so. Why?”

“Arabella and I found a scribbled note on the back of a Savoy menu, stuck inside one of the old purses. We found it right before Precious collapsed, so I completely forgot about it until just now, when you said ‘MI-Five.’ It was written in Czech, and it said something like ‘You’re in danger—run.’ According to the translation app, anyway. Maybe Eva was Czechoslovakian?”

He rubbed his chin. “Could be. There were a lot of Czech refugees in England during the war, so it’s certainly possible. But why the cryptic note?”

“There’s no way of knowing, is there? Unless Precious tells us.”

Our eyes met in mutual understanding. “Then we’ll wait until she fully recovers and ask her.” Colin spoke so matter-of-factly that I could have almost believed the world would unfold the way he predicted.

We resumed walking. “So, when did Graham die?” I asked.

“Now, there’s a good question. Precious told us that she saw him off and on in nineteen forty and early nineteen forty-one, and then he and Eva disappeared from her life. Hyacinth can’t find anything related to an Eva Harlow, nor can she find a date or a place of death for Graham. She hasn’t given up, of course. She’s quite keen on the challenge of finding out what happened to him. She believes it’s very untidy of the government archives to be missing this information, and she is bound and determined to put it to rights.”

As we approached Harley House, my steps slowed. “Just out of curiosity, when did William die? I keep thinking about Sophia’s parents, losing their elder son in the war and not knowing what happened to the second one. It must have been awful. I guess that’s why it wasn’t spoken about around your father.”

“Most likely—how very British of us. But from what I remember, William was killed toward the beginning of the war. He wasn’t married and had no children. My father said it was lonely growing up without siblings or cousins.”

“And your father was born in nineteen forty-one, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right. And then waited until he was practically in his dotage before getting married and having children. My mother is a good decade younger than he is. But according to my parents, their late start wasn’t for lack of trying. Not that I wanted them to elaborate, of course.”

“Of course.” I placed my hand on the outside railing of the steps leading up to our block of flats and led the way inside, choosing the stairs instead of the lift, unwilling to be with Colin in a confined space. I put my key into the front door and walked inside, almost tripping over George, who had apparently been waiting for Colin. I scratched behind his ears, happy to have something to keep my hands occupied. “I’d offer you some Scotch, but I remember what happened last time.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

The small hallway lamp illuminated his smile, and I had the sudden impulse to kiss him. Instead I slipped his sweater over my head and handed it back. “Yes, it probably would.” I paused, trying to remember the name on the valise label. “By the way, are you familiar with the last name Nash?”

He thought for a moment. “Not personally, no. Just the famous architect of Regent’s Park, John Nash, but he died nearly two hundred years ago. Why?”

“I’ll show you tomorrow. I’m feeling more and more like that bagel.”

He smiled. “Well, then. Go get some sleep.” He didn’t move away. “Are we ever going to talk about last night?”

“I’d rather not.”

“That’s very British of you, you know.”

“Yeah, it probably is. I guess London is rubbing off on me.”

He nodded. “I’m going to take George and stay at my parents’ town house in Cadogan Gardens. I need to get more clothes.”

I wondered if that was the whole reason and felt a little satisfaction in knowing it probably wasn’t.

“Well, then,” he said again. “Good night, Maddie.”

“Good night, Colin.”

I latched the door behind him and was halfway to my room when I realized he’d called me Maddie.