Scrambling to sit, she pressed her hand to her beating chest.
‘Are you all right?’ said Clare, looking up from her letter.
‘I’m not sure.’ She swallowed. ‘How long was I asleep?’
‘A few minutes. Did you have a nightmare?’
‘Yes.’ Iris nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Will you tell me straight away if anything happens?’Robbie’s mother had asked of her back in February.
She’d just watched herself doing it.
It had been a dream though.
Just an awful dream.
Resolutely, determinedly, she pushed it from her mind.
The identity of that colonel, and the woman in the wheelchair, aren’t the only unknowns I’ve wrestled with this week. Plenty more have been nagging at me.
Like, who that other woman was: the one with the Ploughman’s in The Heaton Arms who I thought I recognised.
And, who Tim could have been talking about when he mentioned thatotherwoman who showed him up to the attic.
And, whether he was speaking the truth, or was simply confused, when he saidMabel’s Furyhad already reached England before Robbie radioed Iris that final time.
Imogen hasn’t been able to shed any light.
I finally met her on Sunday. She came up to Doverley for the Remembrance Service, which was beautiful, and poignant, and finished with Justin Holmes, who’s playing Jacob – who didn’t want to tempt fate by having his photograph taken that last morning before he disappeared – bugling a last post that caused all of us to stare into the clouds, my heart to ache, my throat to burn, and, seemingly, the entire world to stand still.
All I wanted, afterwards, was to go to the cottage. The force I felt tugging me there was huge. I didn’t question what made that happen, or even try to fight it – there’s only so much of that I can do – I simply knew I’d feel better if I went.
But I didn’t go, because Imogen was there, even lovelier in person than on the phone, and I couldn’t just leave her. Ana invited her to watch some of the filming, and since I wasn’t involved in our next shot, I kept Imogen company, filling her in on Tim’s revelation that Robbie made it back to England.
‘What do we even do with this?’ she said.
‘I wish I knew,’ I told her.
I’ve been racking my brains all week. Obviously, the only thingtodo is solve the mystery of what happened, but I can’t think how. No one can. Google’s no use, it never has been, and, as Ana’s pointed out, there’s no point hiring more researchers either. We’ve had a whole crew of them working on the movie; if the truth was lurking in an archive somewhere, they’d have found it.
It can only come from Tim.
‘Maybe you should talk to him,’ I suggested to Imogen. ‘He said you’d called … ’
‘What? No. I haven’t spoken to him since his birthday.’
‘Really?’ I frowned.
She said you’d come, Tim said to me.
Was he confused about that, too?
Again, it’s a question I can’t answer.
Yet another frustrating unknown.
‘Why don’t you go see him again,’ said Imogen. ‘You’ve obviously been working some magic with him. Maybe he’ll tell you more.’
