THE BOMBS FELL for what seemed like hours.
Once the all-clear sounded and everyone was finally allowed out, a distinct odor of smoke tinged the night air. Fortunately there were no fires to be seen, meaning wherever the bombs had struck was not in the vicinity.
Later, newspapers reported that all of England had been peppered with explosives and incendiaries. While some fell harmlessly in the countryside and fizzled out in gardens, many of those errant hits caused damage. Casualties.
The latter remained in Emma’s thoughts as she went through the motions of her shift at the Booklover’s Library the following day. A little boy in Nottingham had been killed, his mother inconsolable. Emma wished she couldn’t imagine such pain, but in truth, the story was all she could think about.
The new prime minister had been right—the Battle of Britain really had begun.
What if another air raid happened while Emma was at work?
She’d left Olivia with detailed instructions in the event of an air raid, to grab Tubby on his lead and rush to the caves with a tote to hide him inside. But what if there wasn’t enough time? What if going to the caves instead of the shelter in front of their house took too long? A shoddily built shelter was better than nothing. Wasn’t it?
Which meant that while Emma dreaded facing the truth, she knew Olivia would need to go to the country with Arthur’s parents. Where she would be safe.
The suitcase on Emma’s bed was on loan from Irene.
Arthur’s was with Olivia in Chester, where she’d arrived safely at his parents’ farm per the telegram they’d promptly sent several days ago.
The flat was unnaturally quiet again. The lifeless kind of quiet when the heartbeat of a home was rendered still by the absence of its dearest occupant.
No sooner had Miss Bainbridge found out that Olivia was being sent to the country once more than she immediately secured a place for Emma in the Aldgate branch of the Booklover’s Library in London.
At least Emma wouldn’t be alone. Margaret was going as well.
Emma sifted through her clothes, ensuring her smartest outfits were already packed alongside her brush and other necessary toiletries.
A sharp ring sounded from the main door of the tenement house.
Margaret, most likely, as she’d promised to collect Emma so they could travel to the train station together.
Emma snapped the suitcase closed and hefted it from the bed, grunting at the surprising weight. How could a handful of garments and a couple of toiletries be so heavy?
She shifted its bulk to her right side, as that arm had always been stronger. It was the one she’d used to carry Olivia, and the one she now defaulted to for groceries and the like.
She rushed from the flat, locking the door behind her, and hastened downstairs.
“Not my stockings,” Margaret squealed from below.
Emma arrived to quite a scene where Margaret, smartly dressed in a red coat and a chic matching hat tilted jauntily over one eye, danced her legs away from Tubby. But the dog was relentless, squirming against Mrs. Pickering in a bid to get to Margaret, his neck straining as he flicked at the air with his pink tongue.
After a struggle, Mrs. Pickering pushed Tubby into her flat and closed the door. Her orderly hair was a wild mass of gray jutting out every which way and her flushed face reflected her exasperation. Behind her, Tubby scratched fiendishly at the door.
“Well.” Mrs. Pickering put her hands on her hips and regarded Margaret like she’d grown a second head. “What on earth would possess you to slather your legs in gravy?”
Emma looked at Margaret’s legs where her “stockings” had small tongue-sized flecks missing from the color, revealing pale skin beneath.
“Everyone does it.” Margaret rubbed at her legs, as if she could distribute the color more evenly. “Especially now that Windly doesn’t produce the stockings it used to.” She referred to the local Windly & Co Hosiery factory that had recently stopped making stockings in light of the war effort.
“You don’t have a special kind of makeup for your legs?” Emma asked, incredulous. Even she had seen the advertisements for Henry C. Miner’s liquid stockings.
Margaret sighed. “The color said Gold Mist, but it looked orange when I put it on. I couldn’t very well walk around with orange legs.”
“Not with that red jacket,” Mrs. Pickering said in such a show of sartorial judgment as she stood there with her riotous hair and housecoat that they all laughed.
“You have the details to call the boardinghouse?” Emma asked Mrs. Pickering anxiously.
“For the tenth time, I do,” she replied, patient as ever. “I’ll telephone you the moment you receive a letter or telegram from Olivia or her grandparents.”
Emma’s shoulders eased down a notch. She’d already heard from Olivia, who mentioned she was pretending to be Anne on the farm at Green Gables. There had been an eagerness in Olivia when she left, to learn more about her father through the connection of her grandparents. Emma only hoped her daughter would not experience the coldness she herself had, lest Olivia end up disappointed and hurt.
For now, Olivia was fully embracing life in Chester and had begun to read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. A personal favorite of Emma’s.
Margaret patched her “stockings” as best she could, and then she and Emma were off to the bus stop to begin their long journey to London.
The Boots’ location in Aldgate boasted a pharmacy that never closed, open around the clock on all days of the week to offer medicinal aid to customers.
Emma had never heard of such a thing, but was glad the Booklover’s Library didn’t hold similar hours. Besides, everyone knew that a reader who stayed up beyond their bedtime to finish the book then savored its final moments as they drifted off to sleep. They did not run out at three in the morning to crack open a new adventure.
Arthur had lived in London after escaping Chester and had described the city to her. It had been too large for him, too busy, especially after the unnerving stillness of life at his parents’ farm. But Emma had grown up in Nottingham, which Arthur thought to be the perfect blend of quiet and busy. To Emma, London was a wild ride she’d waited her whole life to experience.
There were theaters to attend, sprawling museums with the most fascinating artifacts to explore, and there were more shops than even Margaret could stop at in the two weeks they were to be there. And the books!
There was an entire area known as Paternoster Row lined with printers and booksellers and warehouses piled high with every book imaginable.
Truly there was no city in the world as incredible as London.
Emma and Margaret were given the first day to themselves, to become acquainted with the city. Initially Emma followed Margaret into and out of countless cosmetics shops. But there were only so many shades of red lipstick Emma could view before Persian Red, Cherry Ripe, Garnet, Firefly, and all the other enticing names began to look exactly the same.
Promising to rejoin Margaret later, Emma wound her way toward the book district, taking her time to look at the artful displays behind large sheets of plate glass marred only by diagonal strips of scrim tape.
In such ways, war had left its mark on the lovely city in addition to nearly every flat surface plastered with posters encouraging people to do one thing or another.
For now, Emma was doing as the signs instructed and walked rather than using public transportation. A misstep in her directions led to her meandering down a narrow street, happening upon a little shop that sat snug between two larger buildings, like a child pressed into the warmth of its parents’ embrace.
The shop was relatively unassuming with its black-and-yellow façade, weathered by time to a pale yellow and threaded through with cracks. Glossy paint on a white sign spelled out the establishment’s name in an old bookish looping script.
Primrose Hill Books.
This was precisely the kind of place she would have gone to with her father in search of rare items for their own collection.
Tape was carefully x-ed over the windows, leaving a patch in the middle to reveal an autumnal scene with paper leaves that seemed to tumble from the ceiling before settling softly on the display of books. Great care had clearly been put into crafting such an appealing aesthetic.
Something twisted in Emma’s chest. She’d found solace among the fellow readers in the Booklover’s Library, but she had yet to enter a bookshop on her own. This too would be part of her path to healing after Papa’s death.
She entered the front door and a little bell chimed. Tower Bookshop had a bell just like it. And like Tower Bookshop, this one had rows and rows of books on offer. Neat pasteboard signs displayed the genres while tidy tables were set up smartly throughout.
Breathing in slowly, she savored the scent of thousands of books, new and old alike, of the dust that settled into cracks never able to be wiped away, of the leather that contained a million adventures between their bindings.
The knot in her chest loosened, and she knew with certainty that this was exactly the kind of place where she belonged.
A young woman with blond hair and large brown eyes approached, her smile friendly. “May I help you?”
Emma glanced up to the second floor of the bookshop where the shelves stretched up to the ceiling. “I think I’d just like to look, please.”
“Of course.” The woman pointed to the history section. “I’ll be right over here if you need me.” On her way to the collection of shelves, she passed a glossy chestnut counter and casually plucked a balled-up bit of paper, which she bent to dispose of in a rubbish bin.
A table off to the right had several copies of Nancy Mitford’s new book, Pigeon Pie, and a sign declaring, Written while Chamberlain was still prime minister. The book poking fun at the phoney war had terrible timing in its release just before France fell to the Nazis. But blaming the former prime minister who had left England irritated with his passivity was nothing short of genius.
Emma chuckled to herself.
“Miss Bennett.” A gruff voice sounded behind Emma. She turned to find a man in a loose jumper with a head of white hair and eyebrows so bushy they practically rested atop his glasses. He held out a ledger to the young woman. “What the devil does this say?”
Miss Bennett appeared entirely unperturbed at his gruff demeanor and she leaned close to read, “Charles Dickens for a Christmas display.”
“Christmas?” He looked at the page again. “What was I thinking?”
“Being prepared in advance,” Miss Bennett suggested.
“Ah, so likely something you put in my head.” Though he sounded cantankerous as he spoke, there was a glint of mirth in his eyes.
If Emma hadn’t heard him call the young woman Miss Bennett, she might have thought the employee was his daughter.
Leaving them to their work, Emma slipped away to explore.
A door at the rear of the building had a small brass placard, reading Primrose Hill Books—where readers find love.
Emma smiled, feeling love in that moment. The love of books and the love of her father, as if his presence resided here among the fragrant aroma of books and the promise of so many stories to be discovered.
“Mr. Evans, has the post come yet?” Miss Bennett asked.
From an aisle over came the reply. “Yes, and there was nothing from your Mr. Anderson.”
“And I was so hoping for a marriage proposal in today’s post.” Miss Bennett sighed heavily.
“I do hope that was a joke,” the man answered dryly.
Miss Bennett replied with a soft laugh.
Emma grinned, recalling how she and her father had shared such banter with one another. Wandering down the classics aisle, she came upon the man who was called Mr. Evans cradling a copy of Les Misérables in his hands.
His tufted brows lifted. “Eh, if you need help finding a book, I suggest you ask Miss Bennett. She’s far more astute at such things than me.”
Emma considered his suggestion. “I think I will, thank you.”
“You’re better than you give yourself credit for.” Miss Bennett appeared at the end of the aisle and tossed a skeptical look at Mr. Evans.
“I’m just the owner.” He waved his hand dismissively and returned his focus to Victor Hugo.
“What are you looking for?” Miss Bennett asked.
“I’m willing to give anything a go,” Emma replied. “What do you generally recommend?”
Miss Bennett reached for the shelf in front of Emma. “This one changed my life.” She pulled a book free and handed it to Emma with a smile.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
The Aldgate location of the Booklover’s Library was far busier than the Pelham Street branch back in Nottingham. Downstairs at the chemist, nurses in white caps shifted behind a stretch of counter, prepared to give first aid advice and distribute medication day or night.
The Booklover’s Library was upstairs, a haven from the bustle of the chemist shop below, though by no means any less busy. The manageress there was the no-nonsense type, with her hair pulled back in a smooth bun and eyebrows that were drawn on in a surprised arch above her keen blue eyes. She was sleek and chic, even with her green overalls tied over her dress, with pearl clips at her ears and her lips a shade of red just slightly deeper and more mature than Margaret’s.
“You likely won’t see most of our patrons again,” she explained in a slightly haughty tone. “Unlike your smaller town libraries, ours is teeming with travelers on the go. They take their book from our location and return it wherever they end up.”
No sooner had they stepped onto the floor than an elderly man approached Margaret. “I’d like this one to help find me a book.”
Margaret looked to the manageress, who waved her approval.
The wail of an air raid siren broke through the serene quiet of the Booklover’s Library. Both Emma and Margaret flinched.
“You’re welcome to go to a shelter,” the manageress said in a bored tone. “I can point you in the appropriate direction.”
Everything in Emma screamed at her to seek shelter, especially after the bombing in Nottingham just days ago. Ignoring the primal urge, she remained standing stoically in front of the manageress in an effort to not look as provincial as the woman had already made her feel.
“There are planes outside,” a woman exclaimed and pointed at the stained-glass windows. The throb of planes reverberated through Emma’s bones, pulling her toward the window.
Her pulse quickened.
There amid the red-and-orange-colored glass was a swarm of planes that seemed to blot out the late-afternoon sun.
“Those are likely our RAF.” The manageress pulled a stack of books toward her and opened her mouth to speak.
Whatever she’d meant to say was overwhelmed by a powerful boom that sent the ground shuddering. The woman by the window screamed and ducked, arms coming protectively over her head. In the distance beyond the colored panes of glass, violent flames exploded.
London was being attacked.