opposite direction gave him an angry look as he stopped and picked it up. “Don’t you know there’s a salvage drive on, sonny?” the man said roughly, pushing past him.
Fury washed through Lewis and he turned, fists up, but the man had disappeared into the blackness.
How could his sister leave them, knowing they would probably never see one another again, and not even send him a letter?
He walked on, as far as Island Gardens, but the river was invisible in the heavy overcast and he felt it only as an icy void sucking more of the warmth from his body. At last, he turned and trudged back to the flat, but that evening seemed to set the tone for the rest of his holiday.
His parents had changed. It seemed to Lewis that his sister’s desertion, following so soon on his brothers’ deaths, had made his gentle father bitter, while his mother was simply worn down with repeated grief and loss. And he found he had changed, as well. When he met his old mates they jeered at his accent, and their lives were filled with talk of going down the pub and concerns that seemed foreign to him. Most had left school at fourteen, in favor of factory work until they were old enough to enlist, and although he felt an outcast, to his surprise he didn’t envy them.
The days dragged by. He thought several times of William, just across the river, but Greenwich seemed a world away and William had not invited him to visit. On Boxing Day, with guilty relief, he kissed his parents goodbye and caught the train back to Surrey, but his pleasure at returning there had been short- lived.
As he watched Mr. Haliburton at the chalkboard, he thought of the first time he had seen him in Edwina’s drawing room, on New Year’s Day. William and Irene had returned and they’d all gathered in the kitchen, poking spoons and fingers into Cook’s pots while she scolded and flapped at them with her apron. After a few weeks of subsisting mostly on turnips and potatoes, Lewis’s stomach was growling at the thought of the ham Cook had promised for their New Year’s feast, and there was to be a tart as well, made from the preserved gooseberries they’d picked in the autumn. He’d been inching towards the larder with the idea of just having a peek at the sweet when Edwina had come into the kitchen and asked them to join her.
“Maybe we’ll get a glass of sherry for a New Year’s toast,” William whispered, elbowing him as they followed Edwina down the corridor, but Lewis had been more interested in watching Irene. She wore a wool skirt and jumper rather than trousers, her glossy copper hair bounced on her shoulders, and it seemed to him that there was something different about the way she walked. Irene had looked back then and smiled at him, and it had made him feel quite odd.
As they entered the drawing room, Lewis first saw through the window the strange car in the drive, its bonnet glistening with rain. Then he noticed the tall, thin man standing before the fire, smoking, his back to them. He didn’t turn round to greet them and Lewis noticed that the hand holding the cigarette shook.
Edwina glanced at the man and lit a cigarette of her own before she spoke. “This is my cousin, Freddie Haliburton. He’s been invalided out of the RAF and will be staying with us for a while.” She paused, sipping at a glass of the sherry she hadn’t offered them. Lewis had been smirking at William’s disappointment and not paying much attention when she’d continued, “Freddie is going to be your new tutor, so I wanted you to get acquainted right away.”
This brought Lewis up with a snap, and as the stranger turned round slowly, he heard Irene give a small gasp beside him.
It took all of Lewis’s effort not to react, though a sidelong glance told him that Irene had raised a hand to her mouth and William had lost his color. The left side of Freddie Haliburton’s face was a shining mass of red scar tissue, closing his eye, dragging the corner of his brow down and the corner of his mouth up in a way that might have looked comical, but did not.
“It’s Group Captain Haliburton,” the man said, and Lewis knew he’d seen the horror in their eyes. “But since we’re going to be such good friends, you may call me Mister Haliburton.” His light, mocking drawl had a slight rasp to it, as if he had difficulty breathing. Then he smiled. Or at least the right side of his mouth rose in a grotesque parody of a smile that was even more unpleasant than his face in repose, and Lewis had suddenly had a very bad feeling about it all.
Now, Freddie Haliburton turned from the chalkboard to face them, and while the shock of seeing his face had lessened, Lewis’s dislike of him had not.
“Mr. Finch,” said Freddie, with the smile Lewis had come to loathe, “shall we see if your ability to think logically about the House of Commons has improved since yesterday? Or could it be that common is as common does?”
KINCAID SLEPT FITFULLY ON THE NARROW bed, waking with the duvet kicked onto the floor, a dull headache, and an image of Annabelle Hammond that had somehow become entwined with a vivid dream of Vic.
But the day that greeted him when he stepped from his room in the farmhouse’s converted stable block was fresh and clear enough to revive his spirits. When he’d breakfasted and thanked his hosts, he set out in the Rover with Madeleine’s directions on the seat beside him.
His route wound up into the hills, and the occasional gap in the thick woodlands gave a superb view of the Surrey Weald. He thought of walking in these woods with Gemma the previous autumn, when they’d climbed Leith Hill together, and the moment’s reminiscing caused him to bypass the turning for the hotel.
After carefully backing up in the narrow road, he entered the drive and bumped slowly along it. As he rounded a curve, the building came into view—massive, redbrick, late Victorian Gothic, and although it was most impressive, he could see why the structure was no longer used as a private house.
Behind the hotel and to the right, the land dropped away down the hillside; to the left the elevation rose slightly, and among the trees he caught a glimpse of a chimney and a red-tiled roof that he assumed must belong to the cottage Madeleine had mentioned.
He left the Rover in the car park in front of the house and walked up the small, graveled lane that led into the woods. As he neared the cottage, he heard voices—no, it was only one voice, he decided as he came closer, rising and falling, then pausing before beginning again.
Another few yards brought him to a clearing in which stood a redbrick cottage surrounded by a low-walled garden. On a sunny patch of lawn he saw a woman, her back to him, pacing and speaking to herself. She wore trousers and a pale blue cotton shirt, and her slender figure was almost boyish, an impression furthered by the short cropping of her auburn hair. She reached the end of her circuit and turned, then came to a surprised halt as
