Yes.
But Emmy didn’t know where Mrs. Crofton lived.
Hoping the shop had not been bombed, she decided to make her way to Primrose Bridal. She still had the back door key. She would wait for Mrs. Crofton there or poke about her desk, looking for the woman’s homeaddress. Surely Mrs. Crofton would understand the need to do such a bold thing.
Emmy quickened her steps, impatient to take what she needed out of the flat and get to the bridal shop.
She arrived back home as the sun dipped low in the sky. Emmy pulled a travel bag from Mum’s wardrobe and added to it the contents of her mother’s top bureau drawer, which included her stockings, a nightgown, a felt-lined jewelry box, and a few trinkets. She also stuffed inside three of her mother’s dresses, a pair of her slacks, gloves, and a pair of heeled shoes. Next, Emmy went into her old bedroom and took the remaining undergarments she had left behind, a few of Julia’s clothes so that when she found her sister, she’d have clean clothes to wear. Back downstairs, Emmy grabbed her satchel and tossed what was left of Thea’s food stores inside—and the hammer—and ran out of the flat and down the deserted street.
The sun was nearly gone from the horizon.
Emmy doubled her speed, running haphazardly with her awkward load.
Let it be standing,Emmy whispered to the heavens.Let Primrose still be there.
She covered the four blocks to the shop in less than ten minutes, dodging debris and collecting stares all along the way. She reached the street and her heart plummeted to her knees. The building on the corner of the street was a smoking hulk.
But Primrose, four buildings down on the opposite side, still stood among the ruins.
Twenty-three
EMMYlet herself into the bridal shop by its back door, certain that Mrs. Crofton wasn’t there, and yet she called for her as she stepped into the shadows.
She locked the door behind her and crept from the back entrance to the alterations room where she had first sewn a hem for Mrs. Crofton. Here, Mrs. Crofton had installed a blackout curtain for nights when she stayed late after business hours. Emmy lowered her belongings to the floor and reached up to the little window that overlooked the alley. She pulled the curtain down, securing it to the hooks Mrs. Crofton had nailed into the plaster. Emmy switched on the small table lamp by the sewing machine, grateful that the electricity on this side of the street had not been affected. A halo of sallow light fell about the tiny room. It was just enough brightness to see her way around but not enough to be detected by patrolling wardens and fire-watchers outside.
Emmy plugged in Mrs. Crofton’s hot plate, filled the teakettle, and for the first time since she had sat in Mr. Dabney’s elegant sitting room—a lifetime ago—she drank hot tea from a dainty, beautiful cup. Along with the tea, Emmy ate two slices of stale bread that she had taken from Thea’s kitchen, spread with marmalade.
In her rush to be away from the flat, she had not considered that she might need a blanket and a pillow this night. It was too dark now to rummage around Mrs. Crofton’s desk for her home address. Emmy would have to sleep at Primrose.
She stripped down to her underwear and, with water from the sink in the loo, she used a scrap of fabric from the alterations dustbin to wash the grit, dirt, and ash from her body. Then she stuck her head under the tap and washed her hair, repulsed by the swirls of dirty suds that accumulated at the drain as she massaged her scalp.
Emmy used a hand towel to dry off and then slipped on a pair of Mum’s slacks and a blouse to serve as pajamas. As she started to comb out the tangles with the brush she’d grabbed from Mum’s bedroom, she noticed it still held strands of her mother’s hair in the bristles.
She pulled the brush away from her head. As she gazed at the mingled strands, hers and Mum’s, a wave of grief swept over her. For hours, Emmy had kept the loss of her mother at a distance, refusing to acknowledge that Mum was dead. In her drastic measures to be able to keep searching for Julia, Emmy had not allowed herself to shed a tear for Mum. Not one. But now as she stood in the back room of the bridal shop, wearing Mum’s clothes and holding her mother’s hairbrush, the full weight of her loss came crashing in. Emmy sank to her knees, clutching the brush to her chest. The bristles pricked her skin like nettles through the thin fabric of her mother’s blouse.
The tears began to fall, rivers of them, as Emmy sat back on her bent knees.
“Mum,” Emmy murmured, as she thought of her mother’s hand on her cheek and the last words she had said to her—the last words she would ever hear her say—floated into Emmy’s mind.
Stay here and watch for your sister.
Don’t go outside after dark.
It’s not safe.
With those parting words, Emmy had suddenly been flung into an unfamiliar world falling apart all around her. She was alone in the very place where, only a few months ago, hope had been breathed into her dreams. Those dreams seemed thin as vapor now, spun by a different girl, someone Emmy barely recognized.
“Mum, Mum...” Emmy’s voice was hoarse as she pushed it past the anguish in her throat. She raised her hand to wipe away tears and caught the faintest whiff of Mum’s perfume on the sleeve of the blouse. Emmy folded herself to the floor and laid her head on the travel bag, clutching the hairbrush to her body just as the night before she had clutched the hammer. As she lay on the tiles, she began to shiver, and she screwed her eyes shut to take herself back to Brighton Beach, to that long-ago sultry weekend when Neville was still in Mum’s life. The sand had been warm between Emmy’s toes and a brilliant sun had been shining down on the water, making the surface of the sea look wired with tiny little flames. The white surf hitting the shore bubbled like bridal lace and Mum had been standing by Emmy as she dug her toes into the sand. They had been watching Neville and Julia play in the waves and Mum had reached down and laid a hand on her shoulder. Emmy had been reminded then of how it had been before Julia was born. When itwas just she and Mum. Emmy had been flooded with the memory of her and Mum splashing in a London fountain and Mum stroking Emmy’s hair and telling her someday she’d have everything she ever wanted.
And then Julia had squealed for Emmy to help her as Neville grabbed her around the middle and the two fell splashing and laughing to the water. Mum had laughed, too.
I guess you’d better go rescue her,Mum had said, nodding toward the water.It’s you she wants.
For a moment, a solitary pinch of time, she and Mum stood in the sand, looking out past the happy swimmers to the vast and endless Atlantic.
You’d better go rescue her.
“I will, Mum,” Emmy whispered now as the sensation of the warm sand and hot sun began to fade away, replaced by the cold tiles.
