forking into Zeus’s manger. He felt her watching him, but she didn’t speak, and after a moment she went out again. Knowing how much he’d hurt her only stoked his rage. How could he touch her after what Freddie had done to him? And how could he stop it from happening again? Freddie had made clear that his refusal would mean compromising Irene, and that was the one thing Lewis could not allow to happen.
It seemed to him that he had only one option … and that would mean never seeing her again.
IT WAS MIDMORNING WHEN FREDDIE FOUND him, sitting hunched against the stone wall that ran behind the kitchen garden.
“There you are,” Freddie said sweetly as he came round the corner. “It’s not like you to miss lessons, Lewis. Whatever is the matter?”
Lewis rose, fists clenched, but Freddie stopped just out of reach.
“Cook’s quite worried about you, you know. If you miss another meal she’ll feel it’s her duty to tell Edwina, and I don’t think we want that, do we?” Freddie stretched his face into the grimace that mimicked a smile. “Oh, and when you’ve had your breakfast, you can get my car ready for me, there’s a good boy. I’m going up to town for the night and I want everything shipshape.”
He turned away, as if that settled everything between them, but when he reached the end of the wall he looked over his shoulder and said, “But I’ll be back—and there’s always tomorrow, isn’t there, Lewis?”
IT CAME TO HIM AS HE lay beneath Freddie’s car. It was so simple—a nick in a hydraulic line and the whole system would lose pressure—that he wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. Everyone knew Freddie Haliburton drove like a maniac—even Cook was always clucking and predicting he’d come to a bad end. No one would think anything of it. He would be safe, and Irene would be safe, and William … he didn’t care about William.
He felt as if he were divided into two people—one who concentrated on the task, and one who observed. That Lewis heard his mother’s voice, but the Lewis who acted ignored them both, and his hands were steady and precise with the knowledge John Pebbles had given him. It was not until he had finished and slid from beneath the car that he realized he was being watched.
William stood just inside the stable door, and Lewis had no idea how long he had been there or what he’d seen. “You have to understand,” William said, stepping forward, and Lewis saw that his face was white and strained. “My grandfather was killed in the Somme. My father was decorated, even though he was only nineteen, and he’s suffered from the gas ever since. If they found out—”
“I don’t care about your bloody pamphlets! You could have stopped him—”
“There was nothing I could do! And now he says maybe he’ll tell my parents anyway, just because he hates cowards. They’ll disown me—”
“Then it serves you bloody right, William Hammond!” Lewis shoved William hard in the chest and bolted out the door.
He ran through the yard and down the hill to the meadow, then along the stream, legs and heart pumping, until at last he collapsed facedown in the soft moss along the bank, sobbing as if his heart would break.
It was an hour before he returned to the house, calm from his weeping, determined to undo what he had done. Then he would tell Irene goodbye and leave.… It was the only way. He’d lie about his age and join up, or get work somewhere, it didn’t matter.
But when he reached the stable yard he heard a wail of anguish from the kitchen, and he knew he had come too late.
IT WAS IRENE WHO TOLD HIM that Edwina had been killed with Freddie. There had been a farm cart in the lane, just over the crest of the hill, and the car had been unable to stop in time. It was Irene who had grown up from one minute to the next and taken charge, helping Cook to her bed and going to ring her father with the news; Irene who had left Lewis alone in the kitchen with William. …
“She wasn’t supposed to go,” Lewis said numbly. His brain and his tongue felt as if they were frozen, and the words seemed to hang in the air, brittle as ice.
“She … she changed her mind at the last minute.” William sat slumped at the kitchen table, his face blotchy with weeping. “He was taking her to see my parents. He said … he said he was going to tell them. I didn’t think. I didn’t think she’d be …”
The import of William’s words dawned slowly on Lewis. He shook his head from side to side to stop the ringing in his ears. “You mean you knew? You knew about the car … and you let Edwina go?”
“I’m not as stupid as you think. You jumped when you saw me standing in the barn, so when you ran away I looked.… I only thought it would delay them—”
“Delay them? You know how Freddie drives and you let Edwina go?” He lunged for William, yanking him from his chair by his collar. “You—you bastard!” Lewis shouted, shaking him. “I’ll kill you for this.” When his fist struck William’s face, the sight of the bright blood flowing from William’s nose only made him angrier.
William hit him back and they grappled, straining for a better hold, another blow.
Then Irene was between them, shouting, pulling them apart.
“Stop it! What’s the matter with you? Stop it! Lewis, how could you?”
Panting, he stared at her. “I … He …” In that moment Lewis realized he couldn’t tell Irene what he’d done that day—he could never tell her. And when he met William’s eyes, he saw that William knew it, too.
He had no memory of the days before Edwina’s funeral, only of Irene, afterwards, coming to him in the barn. His case was packed; he had meant to leave without telling her goodbye.
“You can’t tell me you don’t love me,” she said. “I won’t believe you.”
“No,” he had answered her. “I won’t tell you that. But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing does. I’m sorry.”
