‘Mr Cavill,’ she said, trying not to sound excited. ‘How are you?’
‘Couldn’t be better, Meredith. And it’s Tom, please.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not your teacher any more.’
Meredith blushed, she was sure she did.
‘Mind if I come inside for a moment?’
She shot a glance over her shoulder, through the other doorway and into the kitchen where Rita was scowling at something on the table. Her sister had recently fallen out with the young butcher’s assistant and been terribly sour since. As far as Meredith could tell, it was Rita’s plan to ameliorate her own disappointment by making her little sister’s life every bit as miserable.
Tom must have sensed her reservation for he added, ‘We could go for a walk, if you prefer?’
Meredith nodded gratefully, closed the door quietly behind her as she made her getaway.
They went together down the road and she kept a small distance, arms crossed, head bowed, trying to seem as if she were listening to his good-natured talk of school and writing, the past and the future, when really her brain was scurrying ahead, trying to guess at the purpose of his visit. Trying very hard not to think about the schoolgirl crush she’d once nursed.
They came to a stop at the same park where Juniper and Meredith had conducted their fruitless search for deckchairs back in June when the weather had been hot. The contrast between that warm memory and the grey skies now made Meredith shiver.
‘You’re cold. I should have thought to remind you about a coat.’ He shrugged his arms from the sleeves of his own, handed it to Meredith.
‘Oh no, I-’
‘Nonsense. I was getting hot anyway.’
He pointed at a spot on the grass and Meredith followed readily, sitting cross-legged beside him. He spoke some more, asked her about her writing and listened closely to her reply. He told Meredith that he remembered giving her the journal, that he was delighted to think that she was using it still; all the while he plucked strands from the grass, rolling them into small spirals. Meredith listened and nodded and she watched his hands. They were lovely, strong but fine. A man’s hands, but not thick or hairy. She wondered what they would feel like to touch.
A pulse in her temple began to throb and she felt dizzy thinking about how easily such a thing might be done. All she had to do was reach out a little further with her own hand. Would his be warm, she wondered, would they be smooth or rough? Would his fingers startle then tighten around her own?
‘I have something for you,’ he said. ‘It was mine, but I’ve been recalled to my unit so I need to find it a good home.’
A gift before he went back to the war? Meredith’s breath caught and all thought of hands dissolved. Wasn’t this the very sort of thing that sweethearts did? Exchanged gifts before the hero marched away?
She jumped as Tom’s hand brushed her back. He retracted it immediately, held his palm before her and smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that the gift, it’s in my coat pocket.’
Meredith smiled too, relieved but also somehow disappointed. She returned his coat to him and he withdrew a book from its pocket.
His name on her lips made Meredith shudder. She was fifteen now, and although perhaps only passably pretty, she was no longer a flat-chested child. It was possible, wasn’t it, that a man might fall in love with her?
She was aware of his breath close to her neck as he reached over to touch the book’s cover.
‘Alexander Werth kept this diary while Paris was falling. I’m giving it to you because it shows how important it is for people to write what they see. Particularly in days like ours. Otherwise people don’t know what’s really happening, do you see that, Meredith?’
‘Yes.’ She glanced sideways and found him looking at her with such intensity that she was overcome. It happened in a matter of seconds, but for Meredith, stuck in the moment’s middle, everything moved like a film reel on slow motion. It was like watching a stranger as she leaned closer, drew breath, closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his in an instant of sublime perfection…
Tom was very gentle. He spoke kindly to her, even as he removed her hands from his shoulders, even as he gave them a squeeze, unmistakably of the friendly sort, and told her not to be embarrassed.
But Meredith was embarrassed; she wished only to melt into the ground. To dissolve into the air. Anything but to be still sitting beside him in the stark glare of her horrible mistake. She was so mortified that when Tom began to ask questions about Juniper’s sisters – what they were like, the sorts of things they enjoyed, whether there were any particular flower they favoured – she answered as if by rote. And she certainly didn’t think to ask him why he cared.
On the day Juniper left London, she met Meredith at Charing Cross Station. She was glad of the company, not only because she was going to miss Merry, but because it kept her mind from Tom. He’d gone the day before to rejoin his regiment – for training first, before being sent back to the front – and the flat, the street, the city of London itself, was unbearable without him. Which is why Juniper had decided to take an early train east. She wasn’t going back to the castle though, not yet: the dinner wasn’t until Wednesday, she still had money in her suitcase, and she had an idea that she might spend the next three days exploring some of those swirling paintings she’d spied from the window of the train that had brought her to London.
A familiar figure appeared at the top of the concourse, breaking into a grin when she spotted Juniper’s eager wave. Meredith scuttled through the crowd to where Juniper was standing, directly beneath the clock as they’d arranged.
‘Well, now,’ said Juniper, after they’d embraced, ‘Where is it then?’
Meredith held her thumb and forefinger very close together and winced. ‘Just a few last-minute corrections.’
‘You mean I won’t have it for the train ride?’
‘A few more days, honest.’
Juniper stepped aside for a porter pushing an enormous pile of suitcases. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘A few more days. No more, mind!’ She shook a finger with mock sternness. ‘I’ll be expecting it in the post by the end of the week. Agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
They smiled at one another as the train let out a mighty whistle. Juniper glanced over and saw that most of the passengers had boarded. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose I should be – ’
The rest of her sentence was smothered by Meredith’s embrace. ‘I’m going to miss you, Juniper. Promise you’ll come back.’
‘Of course I’ll come back.’
‘No more than a month?’
Juniper smoothed a fallen eyelash from her young friend’s cheek. ‘Any longer and you’re to presume the worst and mount a rescue mission!’
Merry grinned. ‘And you’ll let me know as soon as you’ve read my story?’
‘By return of post, the very same day,’ Juniper said with a salute. ‘Take care of yourself, little chicken.’
‘You take care, too.’
‘As always.’ Juniper’s smile straightened and she hesitated, flicking a stray hair from her eyes. She was deliberating. The news ballooned inside her, pressing for release, but a little voice urged restraint.
The guard blew his whistle, blocking out the voice, and Juniper was decided. Meredith was her best friend, she could be trusted. ‘I have a secret, Merry,’ she said. ‘I haven’t told anyone, we said we wouldn’t until later, but you’re not just anyone.’
Meredith nodded keenly and Juniper leaned in towards her friend’s ear, wondering if the words would feel as strange and wonderful as they had the first time: ‘Thomas Cavill and I are getting married.’
Mrs Bird’s Suspicions
