Cook kissed her. It seemed to be the best way to keep her quiet.
*
Cook sat with his back against a chestnut tree, Margaret leaning against him, his arms wrapped around her. He told her about Ruby, and Frankie, and everything that had happened.
‘There’s a lot going on at that hotel,’ Margaret said. ‘A lot of people with a lot of secrets. What are the odds she got caught up in something?’
Cook thought about Ruby, and the man she’d crossed, now lying dead in a back garden near Regent’s Park.
‘The hotel’s a distraction,’ he said.
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
They sat in silence, watching searchlights paint the underside of the clouds with light.
‘So there’s a woman out there who needs help, and you’re the man for the job. Or, alternatively, she’s dead and you’re chasing ghosts around the city.’
‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Cook replied.
‘Sounds pretty clear to me,’ she said. ‘Fifty per cent chance there’s a job to be done only you can do, with a young woman out there desperately counting on you doing it, even though she doesn’t know it. Fifty per cent chance you’re wasting your time. But what else would you be doing?’
An owl screeched. Cook listened to the sounds of the woods in the night.
Margaret was right. She had a way of putting things that cut through the noise.
They walked back through the park, past a humming generator powering a bank of searchlights. Past a winch and crew of balloon operators.
‘What’s it like out there?’ she asked.
‘Out where?’
‘The docks.’
‘Same as all wars,’ Cook said. ‘The rich play at strategy while the poor die by the thousand. I don’t see any reason why this one will be any different.’ He thought of the island, more than half the warehouses destroyed. The shelters, badlybuilt, not fit for purpose. A world away from the West End, even if it caught the occasional raid.
‘Bunny’s trying to sell the idea of the blitz spirit,’ Margaret said.
‘He might be selling it,’ Cook said, ‘but the people I’ve seen aren’t buying it. Bunny should keep his fingers crossed the Luftwaffe try to bomb Buckingham Palace or Number Ten – might show the people we’re all in it together. If Hitler keeps targeting the working class, he’ll turn us all into communists. And we’ve seen how that story ends up.’
Outside the Empire, a crowd of onlookers watched. An ambulance and a police car were parked in the street. Two ambulance-men carried out a stretcher, a man lying on it, covered with a bloodied sheet.
‘I can’t tell you what happened over there,’ Margaret said, as they both watched a second man being escorted out by the police. A pilot, judging by his uniform.
Margaret felt for Cook’s hand. She took his little finger and squeezed it, hoping to convey everything she couldn’t say out loud.
Cook didn’t answer. He wanted to tell Margaret it would be all right. That they could take up where they’d left off. Her, and him, and the evacuees, and the farm. A life they’d both had the barest glimpse of.
But that would be a lie. The life they’d left off was gone.
79
No one was coming to help. Ruby looked into the darkness and told herself the truth. She wasn’t a child any more. This wasn’t one of those fairy stories where the knight in shining armour was hacking his way through an overgrown forest. If there had been anyone outside the hotel who’d seen her get into the car, they’d had ample time to report their suspicions.
No. The truth was far more simple. She was going to die here, and then he’d bury her, next to the other girls.
Ruby found a certain comfort in her new-found clarity. It helped with decision-making.
She had an idea. A bad idea. Almost definitely bound to fail. But, it turned out, almost definitely bound to fail started to look a lot better when you compared it to the alternative of definitely going to be killed.
