He grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her outside.
They were in the middle of nowhere. There was a house in the distance but nothing else. Just trees, and fields, and sky. A flock of birds took off from a distant tree.
‘Look,’ he said, nodding at a rough patch of ground down the side of the shelter.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘What do you see?’
Ruby saw stinging nettles, some brambles – a few blackberries. Then she went cold, realising what he was pointing at. The earth had been disturbed in places. It had sunk, and nettles grew instead of grass. The shapes were recognisable. Six feet long. Two feet wide. Spaced a few feet apart.
Graves.
She counted them. Five in total, varying ages judging by the weeds. The oldest was entirely overgrown. The most recent was still earth.
‘In case you’re wondering how good you’ve got it, and how bad it can get if you don’t play along,’ he said. He kept his voice calm, like he was telling her about the weather.
‘And it wouldn’t just be you,’ he said. ‘There’s others you care about. The boy, for a start.’
Ruby couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She nodded.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, and I forgive you. We’re meant to be together, Ruby, you and I. You’ve always known that, same as I have.’
After he left, locking the door behind him, she listened as his boots crunched on the gravel path, the sound fading to nothingness. Then it was just her and the crows.
Ruby was scared. More scared than she’d ever been in her life. She’d been managing to tell herself it was all some kind of misunderstanding. A momentary thing that would end. But now she’d seen the graves, she knew exactly how it would end.
55
It took Cook an hour of reconnaissance and two pints to fully establish what was going on.
The U-shaped bar was busy on all sides – thirty or forty drinkers at any one time, standing or sitting at high stools. Young women back from a day of shopping. Elderly matrons, watching out for the honour of said young women. A solid number of military men – the RAF represented most strongly, but Cook saw both army and navy dress uniforms. Most of the military personnel were his age or older, careerists who presumably worked nearby at the Admiralty, the War Office, or Adastral House. Others were young men, in town to let off steam.
Some of the young women didn’t fit in. Cook counted six in total, but he focused on two of them, on his side of the horseshoe bar. Both were dressed in an approximation of a young heiress, but even a casual observer could tell they hadn’t got it right. Their make-up was too loud. The colours of their clothes ever so slightly brighter than the bright young things surrounding them. Cook wasn’t a fashion critic – he couldn’t think of an item of clothing he owned that wasn’t some variant of brown – but he knew enough to notice things that didn’t fit. As he looked around the crowded bar, filled with soldiers, civil servants, and the great and the good from across Europe, the girls stood out. Presumably by design. Like a colourful window display.
Cook watched a young couple standing at the bar. A pilot officer and one of the young women, leaning in, a cigarette in her mouth, so the pilot officer could light it for her.
‘Drinking alone?’ a woman’s voice disturbed Cook’s reconnaissance. Without asking for a reply, the woman took the other seat at Cook’s table. She had a drink in her hand – a large cut-glass tumbler liberally filled with whisky.
‘You don’t belong here any more than those girls do,’ she said. ‘I’ve been watching you.’
She was American, judging by her accent. It made her sound like a movie star. Cook gave his best impression of a smile, trying to hide his annoyance at being disturbed.
The woman held out her hand. ‘Eleanor Goodrich.New York Herald. How about you?’
Cook took her hand. They shook.
‘Douglas Jardine,’ he said. Jardine had captained England’s cricket team, brought home the Ashes from Australia. Goodrich seemed unaware, and Cook immediately felt guilty for making her seem foolish in his eyes.
Cook wasn’t sure he’d ever met a real journalist, let alone an American one. Eleanor Goodrich was dressed like she was ready for an expedition. White linen shirt, khaki waistcoat, liberally supplied with pockets. He couldn’t see below the table and hadn’t been watching when she’d sat down, but he guessed she’d be wearing khaki trousers and desert boots.
‘Who do you write for?’ she asked. ‘I’m open to collaborations, but only if I get the lead byline.’
‘What do you think the story is?’ Cook asked.
‘So thereisa story.’ She smiled. She looked across the crowded room to the bar.
‘You’ve been pretty focused on the bar,’ she said. ‘I thought at first you were eyeing up those working girls, choosing which one you wanted. But you don’t need to sit all the wayover here to do that. Most of the men who’ve come in to pick up a girl dive straight in, from what I’ve seen.’
