“Daddy.” Always whispered, not so much because she’d never progressed to the more grown up ‘Dad’, more that she didn’t want people to know she talked to him. Their special bond, my daddy, my Evie. The ‘my father’ she talked about to others had a remove, a distance to it that had never been between them, until he’d made his fateful decision.
Eva touched the glass, asked him the question she always did. The echo of him remained stubbornly silent, as always. She still didn’t understand.
The urgent firefighting for the ball took until late afternoon before she could snatch the minute she needed to dial a number she hadn’t in seven years.
“The number has not been recognised. Please check and try again.”
She did as the automated voice ordered even though she knew she hadn’t got it wrong; memorising things like that saved lives.
Gordon could have retired. That most unlikely scenario could be an explanation. More likely he’d moved departments, changed responsibilities, his number might have been compromised. Could have, might have been, always worse, the imagining.
“SIS, how may I direct your call?” Bad enough that MI6 could be found through Google, but it had been Americanised? He’d hate that.
“Gordon Stamford, please.”
“One moment.”
The number rang, once, twice—
“Yes.” Hearing his voice catapulted Eva back to when she was a different person. She opened her mouth to reply as Charles burst into her office, her present smashing into her past. She slammed the phone down.
“Your friend didn’t come through.” His accent was stronger in his agitation, more Royal Family than his namesake.
“Friend?”
“Per Larsson, not much of a friend.” She bit back that her godfather and his wife were the only family that counted to her, apart from him and Lily. “I didn’t get it.”
Oh, no. Eva’s dart of disappointment for him made her wince. He must be devastated.
“He can’t sway the judgement of the committee, you know that.” She said it gently, trying to be on both sides at the same time.
“Chairman of the Committee, that’s exactly what he could do.”
It was Charles’ upset lashing out; she knew he would only want to win on merit.
“I’m so sorry you’re disappointed.” She put her arms around him, her head on his shoulder, and waited for the few seconds before she felt him relax against her, hug her back.
“Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.” But not getting it this year didn’t mean forever. He was only forty, plenty of time to try again. She squeezed him tighter.
“This changes everything,” he murmured into her hair.
“It doesn’t change what’s important.”
“It’s a disaster.”
He released her. Beneath her smile, his frown softened but she’d never seen him so crushed. Closed about his work usually, he’d invested all his hope in this, his ultimate recognition. That would be what hurt, that he believed his peers had found his work and, by consequence, him lacking. Setbacks wounded, even if your dream wasn’t as grandiose as a Nobel prize. She still had to reality check herself at Every Drop that she was sitting amongst hers.
“No for now doesn’t mean forever.” She couldn’t help saying it.
“You planning on being late home?”
“I never plan it, but it’ll probably happen. Can you be there for Lily? I promised her pizza tonight. Things’ll calm down after the ball. Did you get a tux yet?”
He shook his head. She stroked his stubble, more silver than brown these days, but she loved they were growing older together. Eva ignored the pressing weight of the ticking clock—he needed her for that moment.
“I can escape to help you choose one, but only if you promise you’ll trim this. Go for less of the academic I never remember to shave, more of the designer stubble.” His still mostly brown hair had grown into tighter curls, he’d get away without getting it cut.
“I could manage that.” He tried for a smile back.
The cold air snatched their breath, the temperature agreeing with the forecasters that early snow was on the way, but the rain-slicked pavements wouldn’t hold on to it for long.
“We can walk up to the City, there’s a couple of suit hire places.”
“At City prices?”
“Probably, but we can try TK Maxx first.” Where she’d got her dress.
London Bridge was ordinarily busy, the major incident couldn’t be near there. Buses and heavy traffic rumbled over the choppy Thames beneath them. Charles let her precede him through the pedestrian filtering bollards that marked each end. Barriers ran the length of the pavements, keeping pedestrians safe from terrorist drivers. Eva could remember when walking over a bridge in London wasn’t anything, when no one would have tried to mow people down to make a point. The times in which they lived.
“What is it?”
Charles had stopped, was looking behind them. “Nothing. Come on, before it rains again.” He grabbed her hand.
Eva smiled, that was nice. When they’d first met they always held hands, but when they’d got back together seven years ago, it had slipped out of the pattern of being them. Not so easy to do that and wrangle a four year-old.
“You can slow down, they won’t sell out before we get there.”
But he glanced behind again, sped up further. Eva pulled her hand away from him, but he gripped her tighter. “Charles, I’m wearing heels.”
They were north of the Thames now, on the City side of the bridge. The green man telling pedestrians it was safe to cross faded ahead of the traffic lights changing from red.
Eva slowed to wait but, as the traffic restarted, Charles ran straight into its path, pulling her with him.
4
“Charles, move.” Eva pushed against him but he held her, rooted between the left hand and middle lanes of London Bridge, a fragile human island in a sea of cars and vans, racing to beat the traffic lights.
“Stop it, we’re safer here.”
“No, we’re not.”
A double-decker hurtled towards them, its driver beeping the warning there wasn’t enough space. Eva wrenched out of Charles’ grip and charged back the way they’d come.
She
