I’m nervous.
For the first time since I saw what I saw from Iris’s window, and heard what I heard, all the planes’ engines really will be roaring. Effect’s flare pathwillbe alight. I have no idea what that’s all going to do to me, but already I’m bracing for a fight to cling on to my composure. I can’t afford to lose it, especially now I know that there’s someone on staff talking to journalists. Plus, everyone on the cast will be there: the boys and extras out on the tarmac, Emma and me, seeing them off.
‘Proving I’mup to it,’ says Emma, breaking apart her toast. ‘I’m kinda tempted to not be, you know. Now I’m here, I want to stick around a bit longer. I’m gonna hate leaving you all to it when I go. And I guess … Well … ’ She gives us all a sorry look. ‘I wish I could stay for Clare. Keep her alive, for as long as I can.’
‘Yeah,’ says Nick, understanding.
We all understand.
Of the four of us, only Felix is playing someone who actually survived the war.
It’s as we call for the bill, and the landlord brings it to us, along with a complimentary sticky toffee pudding (that none of us have an appetite for, but eat anyway, because it would be too rude, and Hollywood cliched, of us not to), that we get on to the subject of Tim Hobbs. Emma knows about our appointment to see him – I’ve filled her in, swearing her to secrecy – but with everything else going on, I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss it with her properly, and it’s onlynow, at her probing, that I elaborate on my determination to discover what really happened to Robbie, Iris, and the rest of theMabel’s Furycrew.
‘I’m certain Imogen has it wrong,’ I say. ‘Iris couldn’t have killed them all. She was too smart, too good. She loved Robbie too much.’
No one disagrees. I am, after all, not saying anything that thousands of Goodreads and Amazon reviewers haven’t already said, passionately – just as thousands more have countered them, passionately. (Imogen’s ending is, in essence, marmite.)
But Emma does frown.
‘You think Tim might know what happened?’ she asks, sceptically.
‘I think there are things he hasn’t let on. A planecan’tfly itself.’
Again, it’s hardly an epiphany-like proclamation. Imogen acknowledges as much in her author’s note, suggesting that the crew might have riggedMabel’s Furyto fly in a straight line for the coast before baling out – so giving Tim, unconscious and full of shrapnel, a chance at survival.
I’ve never really bought into that, though. To me, it just feels too far-fetched that the six of them would have been able to pull off such a thing, especially in high winds, with their engines shot to bits. Nick agrees, as does his flight instructor – and they’ve both spent a lot more time in a Lancaster’s cockpit than Imogen.
Other theories about what might have happened abound online, but I’m not convinced by any of them either. I don’t believe it was Robbie’s ghost who steered his friend home, and I definitely don’t think it was Robbie himself. He was no coward, and if he’d managed to get the plane close enough to England to crash land it, he’d have remained with Tim to try and see him safely down. His body would have been found.
‘Who was in the cockpit then?’ asks Emma.
‘It had to have been Tim,’ I say.
‘Not a chance,’ counters Felix.
‘He started out in the RAF as a pilot.’
‘Not for long. He only lasted five minutes in training.’
‘A bit longer than five minutes … ’
‘Still, he never trained in a Lancaster. Nick, come on, could you fly one off the bat, in the dark, with failing engines?’
‘CouldI?’ says Nick, discarding his spoon on the plate. ‘Yeah, absolutely. Couldyou? No. No way … ’
‘Sod off.’
‘Seriously, though,’ says Emma. ‘Could you?’
‘Seriously –’ he raises his broad shoulders in a shrug – ‘who knows what anyone might find themselves capable of, fighting for their life.’
‘He was practically dead,’ says Felix. ‘He’d been bleeding out since Berlin.’
‘Only according to him,’ I say. ‘But what if he only got like that in the crash? Or what if his shrapnel wounds were minor?’
‘Why would he lie about that?’ asks Emma.
‘I don’t know. But someone flew that plane. And if Tim was well enough to do that, then he must have been able to hear what Iris said to Robbie on the radio. He heard her sayabsolutely pancake, didn’t he? Herememberedthat. He’s remembered so much … ’
