‘Charlotte?’ Margaret called. ‘We need to talk.’
Charlotte stopped trying to escape. Margaret could see the internal battle she was fighting – keep up the pretence, or admit it all. The girl wanted it over with. Wanted to confess – face the outcome. Anything would be better than the deception.
They walked slowly. Charlotte took them down a path between two houses, out to the fields. They walked along the top edge, the rest of the field sloping down into a gentle valley. At the bottom of the valley, a collection of low buildings, too big to be barns. A landing strip was visible in the distance, and a windsock fluttered in the evening breeze.
‘I was a fresher,’ Charlotte said. ‘Completely alone. Out of my element. Every hour I wasn’t in lectures I spent in my room. It was horrible. Not that I’m making excuses, I just want you to understand.’
‘Of course,’ Margaret said.
‘One night I forced myself to leave the room. Went to a pub. Sat alone in the lounge bar, making up a story of what I’d tell mother. A succession of parties and friends. Everything she wanted for me. But then a professor bought me a drink. He’d come from dinner, still wearing his robes. Ludicrous really. We talked. He bought me another drink. I wasn’t really used to it. He took me back to his rooms. Said he’d had his eye on me. Said I was to be his wild oat. It was flattering.’
Charlotte stopped walking and leant on a gate, watching as a Spitfire came in to land in the valley. Margaret stood beside her. Not too close to spook her. Close enough for moral support.
‘I fell pregnant. He said he knew someone. Paid for it all. Nobody needed to know. But then, afterwards, he said heneeded something in return. As if he hadn’t already had what he wanted.’ Her face flushed.
Margaret put her hand on Charlotte’s.
‘You’d told him you lived near the airfield,’ Margaret suggested. ‘Did he ask about that the first time you met?’
Charlotte nodded.
‘He studies aerodynamics,’ she said. ‘Wing shapes. Lift. He can talk your ear off on the subject. Sounds funny, now, but I liked being the one he wanted to talk to. He said I helped him, said I was his muse.’
‘He said I should write to him,’ Charlotte continued. ‘Over the summer hols. Asked me to keep an eye on the airfield. Wanted to know what types of planes they had. How many. That sort of thing. It didn’t seem strange at first. We’d write most days. Not just about the war. Other things, like a couple would. But he wanted more and more. Wanted me to get to know the pilot officers. Report back. Where they’d been. What they were training for. By then I knew I was in shtook. All those posters. Keep mum, and all that.’
‘You weren’t to know,’ Margaret said.
‘It’s all right,’ Charlotte said. ‘I know why you’re here. I’ve been expecting someone. I won’t blame you.’
She held out her hands, wrists together, as if she expected Margaret to produce a pair of handcuffs.
‘I want you to keep writing your letters,’ Margaret said, ‘but I want you to send them to me first. I’ll pass them on, after I’ve made some changes.’
Charlotte brightened. A light at the end of the tunnel. But the light disappeared as she had a thought.
‘Will I still be working for Hitler?’ Charlotte asked.
Margaret smiled.
‘No dear, you’ll be working for me.’
76
Cook let the evening crowds swirl around him. He was at an impasse. No route forward. No information. No job to be done.
Reynolds had taken Dottie back to the shelter. He’d be briefing Gracie by now.
Cook had made a mess of things. He’d got nowhere, and now a man was dead. He should go back to the farm. A short enough walk down to Victoria, catch a late train back to Uckfield.
But something held him here. Leaving now would be like walking out of a show halfway through.
‘Is it that dreadful in there?’
Cook recognised the voice without needing to turn around. The American woman. The journalist.
‘I was having the same thought,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you want to sit in a regular bar and have a regular drink, without all the hysteria.’
They were across the road from the Empire. Cook had walked here without thinking. The place the trail had gone cold.
