26
THREE WEEKS LATER
Hope knew something was wrong when the door shut with a heavy bang and Gus appeared in their tiny kitchen, his eyes bloodshot and his face drained of colour. She’d been making dinner for them, a little ritual they’d fallen into over the past weeks as they’d begun to plan what their life would be like together, and because she no longer had the business to keep her busy or take up their evenings. But the moment she saw him, she turned off what she’d been cooking and gave him her full attention.
She held out her hands and clasped her fingers around his. But when he couldn’t meet her gaze, she lifted one hand to his chin, gently tilting his face so that he had to look at her. She’d never seen him like this, not even when his father had discovered their illegal absinthe production.
‘Gus, what’s wrong?’
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs and she went with him, sitting beside him and reaching for his hands again. His palms were warm against hers, but when he finally looked at her again, his eyes were full of sorrow. His mouth opened and then closed without a sound.
‘Gus, what’s so terrible that you can’t tell me?’
‘I’ve been conscripted.’
She stilled, her fingers tightening against his at his barely audible words. ‘Conscripted?’ she whispered. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ve been conscripted into the army. I have to report tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Other men I know have managed to avoid it after they received the letter, but my father told me I can’t shirk my responsibility to my country. I don’t have any choice but to go.’
There had been constant whispers, the newspapers full of the threat of conflict and what it might mean not just for France but for all of Europe if war was declared. But Hope hadn’t thought how it might affect them, hadn’t considered that it might separate them before it even landed on their shores. Could fate be so cruel as to part them now? Was there nothing they could do to get him out of it?
‘The letter came two weeks ago,’ he said, the bitterness impossible not to hear in his voice. ‘They knew about it and kept it from me, so that there was no time left to delay it or to try to get out of it entirely.’
‘You think they did this to punish you?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think it, I know it.’
It didn’t surprise her. His parents hadn’t been supportive of their decision to stay together after all, and even less supportive when he’d told them that they would be leaving France. If she was honest, they’d been downright horrified. But he didn’t need to hear her say anything about his family right now; what he needed was her support, even if she did feel as if her world was falling apart around her. He needed her love and her arms around him, her warm smile, even if inside she was stone cold.
‘What does this mean for us?’ she asked.
He shook his head, tears filling his eyes as he reached for her. Hope moved to sit on his lap, cradling his head against her chestas she gently stroked his hair. She’d never felt such a desperate need to touch him, to hold him and not let go.
‘It means I have to leave you,’ he whispered. ‘It means that I have to break the promise I made you.’
Hope held him even tighter, even as her own fears rose inside her. Why now? Why, when she was pregnant with their child, did they have to face this?
‘There’s no way around it? You can’t tell them that you’re expecting a baby? We can’t somehow defer it, or leave before?—’
‘Hope,’ he said, so gently it broke her. ‘I will do everything I can to stop this from happening. I will fight every day to come home, even if it’s just to delay my service. I made a promise to you, and I have no intention of breaking it.’
She nodded, hearing the sincerity in his words, the pain in his voice. But she could also hear what he wasn’t saying: that he didn’t believe there was anything he could do to get them out of this.That I’m going to be left alone. That tomorrow, Gus will leave and I’ll be left to have this baby on my own. That I’ll have to navigate life without him until whenever it might be that he can come home.
‘You truly think your parents won’t help you? The idea of their son being enlisted in the army must terrify them,’ she said. ‘You don’t think they could be bluffing, as a way to drive us apart?’ She swallowed. ‘You don’t think they would help you if they thought we were no longer together?’ Hope didn’t even want to say it, but if it could get him out of service, if it could even delay what was otherwise inevitable…
He rose then, going to stand at the small window to look out over the street below, his shoulders slumped forward.
‘I think you’re right. They see this as a way to push us apart,’ he said, so quietly she could only just hear him. ‘But my father has indicated that he thinks the talk of war is nothing but fearmongering, so maybe he doesn’t even reckon it a seriousthreat. Perhaps he hasn’t considered the very real fact that if war is announced, I’ll be first to serve.’ The bitterness in Gus’s voice wasn’t something she’d ever heard before.
She came to stand behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and placing her cheek to his back, knowing that it was her touch he needed more than her words. Tears slipped silently down her cheeks as she imagined a life without him, for however long that might be. She didn’t even want to consider the possibility of him going to war, but she needed to be brave for the both of them.
‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to protect you, I don’t?—’
‘Shhh,’ she whispered, swallowing away her fears, not wanting him to know just how terrified she was. ‘We’ll find a way through this, Gus. I promise you, we will.’
But even as she said the words, she didn’t believe what she was saying. How could she? Because all she knew was that she was about to be left alone, with a baby on the way and no one who loved her.
She’d been scared before in her life, but nothing, absolutely nothing, matched the fear she felt right now.
