“Maybe you should ring up Mrs. Howell in Moreton and make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“Make sure the sisters didn’t return on their own and that no one recorded it!” Emmy replied, a little too forcefully. “I mean, perhaps the children returned on their own. I would just like to know for sure. I’ve—I’ve a report that the younger Downtree sister has been seen on the streets in Whitechapel. I... just want to know if that is possible. She’s quite young.”
The woman shrugged. “I suppose.” She picked up the telephone and asked for the Moreton exchange while Emmy waited, trying very hard not to pace.
“Yes, this is Vera Brindle at HQ,” the woman said afew moments later. “I’m just checking to see if the two Downtree sisters reported as runaways in September have turned up. They had been billeted at the home of a Charlotte Havelock in Stow-on-the-Wold.”
There was an interminable moment of silence as the woman listened to an answer that Emmy couldn’t hear. She wanted badly to yank the receiver from the woman’s hand and shove it next to her own ear instead.
“Oh. I see. Yes. Quite right,” the woman said.
Emmy closed her eyes for a second to keep from pouncing on the woman.
“Yes. No doubt.”
For the love of God...
“All right, then. Thank you very much.” The woman hung up and looked at Emmy. “No sign of them, I’m afraid.”
Emmy couldn’t breathe. “Truly?” she finally eked out.
The woman closed the ledger they’d been looking at, as if that little matter was done for the day. Maybe forever. “Mrs. Havelock has been instructed to inform Mrs. Howell if the girls turn up. But they haven’t. And their mother was killed, you know, so it’s a very sad business. No one knows what became of those girls.”
Hope that had filled Emmy’s heart only moments ago was suddenly sucked away. A cold and ironlike dread filled the emptiness.
The woman patted Emmy’s hand. “You did all you could.”
Emmy felt as though she might vomit, and she raised a hand to her mouth.
“Really, now. You shouldn’t take it so to heart, Isabel. You’ll go mad if you do.”
“Yes,” Emmy whispered. “I just... I haven’t eatenanything yet today and I...” But Emmy’s voice faded. The effort of pretending her nausea was just the result of having missed breakfast was too much for her. “Thank you for your help,” Emmy mumbled, and moved away.
“You should go to a canteen right now and have something to eat!” the woman called after her. “It’s not smart to work so hard on an empty stomach.”
Emmy nodded and continued out of the billeting office and back outside into the rain.
She tipped her face up to the sodden clouds and waited for the icy downpour to cleanse her of her mistakes. But as people walked past her and stared, she knew she was just a girl standing in the pouring rain.
***
EMMYdid not return to her afternoon duties for the WVS. She made her way slowly back to Primrose, on foot, hardly caring if anyone saw her. She let herself in by the back door, and, soaked to the bone, curled up on top of the wedding dresses that lay like mattress stuffing on the floor.
Tears did not come; she was beyond the uselessness of tears. But sleep finally did.
Emmy awoke a few hours later, freezing, her skin chafed from her wet clothes. She changed into dry clothes, made a cup of tea, and hung the damp wedding dresses she’d been lying on back on their tossed hangers to dry.
Hours later, when the sirens began to scream, Emmy did not crawl under the sewing table. She sat in the middle of the floor, shivering from the cold, and implored the heavens to give her what she was due.
But as incendiaries and bombs fell all over London, Emmy’s frozen corner of the war remained stalwart and upright.
When she fell asleep again, she did not awaken until she heard a tapping at the back door. Her first thought was that the bridal shop had been hit after all and was on fire. Everything was hot. Burning hot. Maybe she was in hell, and the tapping was the sound of the damned banging on the walls of their prison. She found she didn’t care.
And then someone said, “Isabel!” and she wanted to say,There is no Isabel,but her throat was coated in broken glass and she could utter nothing. The flames were covering her head, bursting out of her chest.
There was a loud noise and then she felt snakes on her arms. They coiled themselves about her and lifted her off the floor.
