‘Let’s just find the tube station at least,’ Violet suggested, slurring her words.
‘Then what? Sleep down there like those other poor rats?’ Elsie demanded. ‘No, thank you—no public sheltering for me. I’m going to find a nice hotel.’ She began to struggle along the pavement with Violet at her heels.
‘What about hitch-hiking?’ Violet called.
‘Look, over there—The something or other Arms.’ Distance and drunkenness muddled the words on the sign. Elsie didn’t care now, she just wanted to sleep. ‘Come on.’
They crossed the road and entered the grimy lobby. It was a cheap dive—the type used by married soldiers for illicit liaisons. From somewhere behind the reception desk came the thump-thumping of a band.
‘No, Violet,’ Elsie warned, knowing full well what was coming next.
‘Just one more drink?’ she pleaded.
Elsie looked at the stern woman staring at them from behind the desk. ‘Good evening. Do you happen to have a room available for the night? You see, we’ve missed the last—’
‘—No, fully booked,’ the receptionist snarled, barely looking up from whatever she was doing behind the counter. Elsie leant over to see. Knitting.
Violet seemed to have heard something entirely different from that which Elsie had understood and her eyes illuminated. ‘Come on—just one more gin.’
And so, Elsie found herself squashed in a dark pokey room crammed with all manner of servicemen and women jitterbugging to the upbeat tunes of a poor band sweltering in the corner.
Violet pushed through the crowds to a small bar and ordered two more drinks.
‘To Sardinia! Or Sicily! Or wherever,’ she shrieked.
‘Well, good evening, ladies,’ a beefy American serviceman greeted. ‘My name’s Charlie and this is my good friend, Clay.’ The man he introduced stepped out of his shadow and grinned.
‘Violet Christmas. Absurd name—you don’t need to say. This timid little flower,’ she said, pointing at Elsie, ‘Is Miss Elsie Danby.’
Elsie squirmed uncomfortably at being addressed in such a manner, but smiled politely.
‘She won’t want to play, though,’ Violet continued, ‘she’s besotted by a pilot, but he’s not all that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Elsie retorted. ‘You don’t even know him.’
Violet shrugged and turned her back on Elsie, offering one hand to Charlie and one to Clay. The three of them merged into the squashed throng of dancing.
Elsie took a sip of her drink and immediately regretted it, her stomach reacting with a bitter gripe. Any more alcohol and she knew that she would be sick. Pushing the glass back across the bar, she shoved her way across the dance floor and back out into the reception.
‘Please,’ Elsie begged the receptionist, ‘have you got anywhere for my friend and me to sleep—even an old cupboard will do. Anything to avoid sleeping underground or in some shop doorway. Please.’
The receptionist grunted, set down her knitting and slid around the desk, unlocking a door opposite to the bar. She held it open and Elsie peered inside.
‘The billiard table?’
‘It’s that or nothing.’
‘We’ll take it—I’ll just go and rescue my friend.’
Elsie re-entered the bar. It took a moment to search among the crowded dance floor to spot Violet. She was in full-swing mode, jitterbugging with Charlie and Clay. Elsie marched over and grabbed her hand. ‘I’ve found us a bed for the night.’
‘Just one more dance,’ Violet stammered, trying to shake off Elsie’s grasp.
‘No, we’re going now. We’re both on duty tomorrow lunchtime. Come on,’ Elsie insisted.
Violet complied and allowed Elsie to lead her away from the dance floor and into the billiard room.
‘Is that where I’m supposed to be sleeping?’ Violet asked.
The receptionist had been in and placed a thin mattress on the table with a bolster and eiderdown. It actually looks vaguely comfortable, Elsie thought, as she began to strip to her underwear.
‘Violet,’ Elsie started, waiting for her friend to focus on her. ‘What did you mean a while ago when you said that Woody ‘wasn’t all that’?’
Violet waved a hand in the air. ‘He just seemed not all that.’ She shrugged and removed her dress. ‘Which side am I sleeping?’
Elsie stopped undressing and stared at her. ‘When have you seen him?’
‘Pardon?’ Violet stammered, barely able to stand up.
‘When have you seen him to know that he ‘wasn’t all that’?
Violet climbed up onto the billiard table, either deep in thought, or ignoring the question.
‘Answer me, Violet,’ Elsie insisted.
Violet threw back her hair and huffed dramatically. ‘I don’t know…He came looking for you while you were wherever you were—Malta. It’s really no big deal, Elsie Finch. Now come and lie down.’ Violet fell backwards onto the pillow.
The conversation with Woody in Captain Caruana’s flashed into Elsie’s head. ‘Your friend was very persuasive…’
He hadn’t been referring to Rosemary at all.
‘What did you do?’ Elsie demanded, a dark thought lurking in the back of her mind, as snippets from hers and Woody’s conversation in the Westminster Hotel flooded in. ‘Listen, Elsie, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I need to say if we’re…’
‘What did you do?’ Elsie bellowed.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
12th July 1943, London
Violet was gone.
Elsie ached all over. She propped herself up on the makeshift bed on top of the billiard table and rubbed her eyes. Shredded oddments from last night’s events rolled into her sober mind for processing. Violet’s exact words were now lost in an alcohol-infused haze, sketchy and irretrievably gone, but the gist and the appalling nugget of truth remained like a cold stone in her stomach.
She jumped down from the table, hurried over to a dustbin in the corner of the room and was sick. The more she thought of last night, the sicker she became.
She sat on the balding,
