‘In one of his letters, he told me a story about a seagull.’ I smiled, remembering. ‘He grew up near the sea and his mother saw a gull with a broken wing on the beach. She asked Harry to put it out of his misery and he went off with his cricket bat.’
‘Good gracious,’ said Mrs Gold, putting her hand over her mouth.
‘No, he didn’t do it. He couldn’t. He took the seagull home and looked after it.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘He looked after it for three years.’
‘Three years!’ Mrs Gold hooted with laughter. ‘That’s wonderful.’
‘But he knew the seagull could recover, you see?’
‘Yes, I see.’ She frowned. ‘I think I see.’
‘Perhaps if it had been more badly injured, he’d have done things differently. If the gull had been in pain, and had been dying slowly then he might have changed his mind.’
‘Perhaps.’
I put my mug down on the coffee table. ‘People think death is peaceful but it isn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve sat with patients when they’ve died and it’s not how people think. It’s not like going to sleep. It’s unpleasant and upsetting and frightening. And sometimes it takes days and days.’
Mrs Gold nodded. ‘I’ve seen people die,’ she said carefully. ‘Quicker is better. Merciful.’
I looked at her sharply. ‘Do you think?’
‘I know.’ She sighed. ‘My father fought in the last war. He said that when men were badly injured and they knew there was no chance they could survive, their own soldiers would sometimes shoot them, rather than let them suffer.’
I was horrified. ‘They did that? They shot their own men?’
‘I believe so. It wasn’t official of course, but they knew it was kinder that way.’
‘When Billy died his commanding officer wrote to me, and one of the things he said was that Billy went quick,’ I told her. ‘They were bombed, you know? As they were evacuated. They were like sitting ducks.’ I took a shuddering breath in. ‘But it was a comfort to know he hadn’t suffered.’
Mrs Gold put her own mug down and took my hands in hers. ‘Has something happened at work, Elsie?’
‘Sort of.’ I looked into her clear blue eyes and wished I could tell her everything, but the knowledge that this awful, terrible thing I was considering wasn’t just merciful but also illegal, stopped me. Instead, I simply said: ‘You’ve helped me so much.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes.’ I stood up. ‘Thank you.’
Chapter 32
Stephanie
Present day
Biggin Hill museum was the sweetest, smallest museum I’d ever visited. Finn had picked me up from Tall Trees after my morning shift in his car – an old Mini that was so perfect for him I was positively gleeful when I got in – and driven us up to the old airfield, explaining that it was the perfect place to try to track down Elsie’s mystery man. The former RAF base where Fighter Command had flown from during the war was now a swanky airport for private jets. I always wondered which celebrities were landing and taking off whenever I went past.
The museum itself was a small new building at the side of the RAF chapel. When Finn and I went in, he was greeted like an old friend by the chap who was on the desk.
‘Good to see you,’ he said, shaking Finn’s hand vigorously.
Finn grinned at him. ‘Likewise. This is my erm, my ah, my Stevie.’
I smiled to myself. He obviously didn’t want to call me hisgirlfriend – we weren’t there yet – but didn’t want to “friend-zone” me either. I liked it.
‘Stevie’s an artist,’ he added. He sounded quite proud, I thought.
‘Finn and I are working on projects that have overlapped,’ I explained.
‘I hear you have a mystery to solve,’ the man said. He looked at Finn. ‘I’ve got all the casualty lists out for you. They’re in the reading room.’
