‘I don’t know.’
‘Tim told me you heard them … ’
‘Yes.’ Just a single word.
So much pain within it.
‘I can’t bear it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to go again.’ She looked up at him, pouring into her stare how much she meant it. ‘Ever.’
‘Iris, we—’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t you dare tell me you have to.’
‘Iris … ’
‘You need to wear your chutes. Always … ’
‘Iris … ’
‘No, I mean it. What use are they damaged? You need to keep them with you. Keep them safe … ’
‘Iris, please –’ he held her face in his hands – ‘it’s all right.’
‘It’s not.’ Tears burnt her eyes. ‘I’m scared, Robbie.’ Her voice fractured on the admission. ‘I’m so scared … ’
‘I know. But we’re here. For now, we’re here.’
‘It’s not enough.’
‘It has to be.’
‘I want now to be forever.’
‘So do I,’ he said. ‘So do I.’
And then they were kissing: hungrily, urgently, backing each other into the cottage, clutching to one another like they might truly hold fast to life itself.
The August morning was only growing hotter.
Close and still.
There was no risk of either of them catching cold as, together, they stole the only escape they could.
They weren’t careful about that.
For once, they weren’t careful about anything.
They were in too much of a rush.
Too desperate to be together again, after their long separation, and forget, however fleetingly, the war they were trapped in, and which kept on, and on, closing in around them, tighter every day.
Time is running out.
They fell asleep that morning wrapped in each other. When they woke, the goshawk’s call fracturing the soft, enveloping silence, neither of them had moved, it was mid-afternoon, and they had to rush to get back to the house and base before they were missed.
Clare was up in the attic when Iris got there, sitting at their bedroom window with Hans’s box of letters on her lap. She wore a cotton summer dress. Her fair hair was loose on her shoulders. Her skin was bathed in golden sunshine.
Iris would remember that image of her, always.
