Absolutely sheeting.
‘I need some fresh air,’ said Clare. ‘And to get away from this wretched banging.’
‘You’ll get soaked.’
‘I’m not worried about that,’ said Clare, making for their bedroom door. ‘I’ll take Prim’s umbrella.’
‘Where were you when Clare died?’ I ask Ellen.
‘Barely fifty yards from her. I was coming out of the ops room. I’d stayed back to finish my reports, and I saw her. She saw me too, and started towards me.’ She speaks quietly, remembering. ‘She had my umbrella. I think she felt badly about it, and was coming to give it back.’
‘And Tim?’
‘Yes, he was there too. He struggled with sleep, and was on his way off for a walk. Clare had had the same idea. Then, out of nowhere, that Messerschmitt was swooping right down over the base.’ Her expression becomes distant. ‘He strafed Clare, and several groundcrew too, before our gunners shot him down.’
Silently, barely aware of my own movement, I shake my head.
‘They were all gone,’ says Ellen, and I see her heart clearly now: in her brimming stare, her clenched hands. ‘Extinguished, in a second.’ Her lips tremble in a heartbroken smile. ‘On this stage, anyway.’
I want to say something.
I can’t speak.
‘She wouldn’t have known anything about it,’ Ellen goes on. ‘I promise you that. I discovered, years later, that her fiancé had been killed only a few weeks before. It would be …wonderful,yes … to think that by the time I got to her, she was on her way back to him.’ She swallows. ‘I ran to her, the instant she fell. Tim did too. But she’d already left us.’ Dipping her head, she presses her fingers to the corners of her eyes. ‘It broke Tim.’ Her shoulders move in a shallow breath. ‘He simply couldn’t stand it.’
‘The other day, he said the war is always happening.’ I force the words out, past the mass in my throat. ‘It upset him so much. I think all he could see of it was the pain. The fear … ’
‘Well, there was plenty of that.’ She drops her hands from her eyes. ‘Love too, though. So much love.’ She gives me another small smile. ‘Don’t forget that.’
‘What happened to Iris?’ I ask her again. ‘The book’s wrong about her, isn’t it? That’s why it made you angry.’
‘Of course it’s wrong. It’s fiction. A story. Tim should never have permitted it … ’
‘But what happened?’
‘You need to ask Tim.’
‘I’ve tried.’
‘Try again.’
‘Doyouknow what happened though?’ I say, and hear how entreating I sound.
But I need, so desperately, for her to tell me that she does.
To believe there’s a hope that I might yet find out.
Because I haven’t given up on being able to do something about this at least, no matter what Ellen might say about us all having our time. No matter her insistence that we can’t change this present’s past.
Rationally, logically, I accept that I probably should.
But there’s been nothing rational or logical about anything I’ve experienced here.
And I can’t give up on anything.
‘I don’t know what happened in that plane,’ Ellen says. ‘But I do know what didn’t happen on the ground. I know what Iris didn’t do, and I’m certain of what she doesn’t deserve. That at leastcanbe fixed. So, visit Tim. Talk to him like you’ve talked to me. Make him tell you.’ She leans back in her chair. ‘Help him make amends at last.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
