There was a long, terrible silence.
Then her mother rose to her feet, her face pinched andwhite. She marched over to Rosalie and slapped her hard across the face. ‘How dare you?’
Rosalie gasped, took a step back and rubbed her stinging cheek.
Her father retrieved the folder from his wife and tried to hide it, but his hands were trembling and he looked truly awful. ‘This is nonsense,’ he said. ‘How could you come here and show me such a thing?’
‘I was given it. I thought you should know.’
‘Ridiculous,’ he said, but there was a hint of something else in his outrage. ‘You actually believed this filth?’
‘I … I didn’t know what to believe.’
‘Enough, I don’t want to hear it,’ he said.
Then, a strange look passed between her parents and Rosalie felt certain that her mother knew something about this.
Her mother spoke again, her voice vitriolic. ‘You treacherous little madam. The sooner you leave home and make your own way in the real world the better. Then you’ll find out how hard life really is.’
Rosalie fled the room in tears. Soon after she heard the front door slam as her father left the apartment. He never usually went out on a Sunday.
Smarting from the slap, she remained in her bedroom brooding and listening to her mother’s heels click up and down the corridor and around the hall.
A few hours later Rosalie heard her father come home.
Her parents murmuring voices rose steadily until all she could hear were her mother’s accusations and sobs and then her father slamming a door. She longed to knowwhat was happening, but they would never tell her. It was bad though, and Rosalie knew she would take the blame.
Her eyes swam with tears. ‘It isn’t fair,’ she muttered. ‘It’s not my fault.’
She’d been trying to help, give her father fair warning, but she knew her parents, and they would never forgive her. Her mother already resented her for being the late, unexpected, unwanted child, who’d always got in the way.
In a flash she knew what she would have to do. Whatever was going to happen here, it would happen whether she was around or not and if shewerehere, she’d be imprisoned in her own home. Her mother wouldn’t let her out except to marry a suitable man, and how easy would that be if a family scandal erupted? In any case, her dancing life would be over. No. Her whole life would be over. She couldn’t go to Claudette. Her sister’s hands were already full enough looking after her three daughters.
It was frightening, but Rosalie prided herself on being independent, the kind of person who adapted easily, who could move on without a second thought.
Although that had never been put to the test.
Until now.
CHAPTER 9
Florence
Devonshire, 1944
Florence arrived back at Jack’s cottage to find it locked and Jack absent, so she left her case and walked up to the farm to see if Gladys knew when he’d be back. When Gladys opened the peeling blue door, Florence blinked rapidly, taken aback by what she saw. The kitchen was a large and square, black-beamed, low-ceilinged room, smelling of bacon and cats. A jumble of crockery, magazines, old newspapers, mugs, cups, glasses, electrical equipment filled every surface and, amongst it all, she spotted three cats. A huge grey one with big round yellow eyes stared at her imperiously from a table covered in an orange and white checked oilcloth, a tabby was curled up fast asleep on a Windsor chair, and a black-and-whitesmaller one with only one ear was stretching itself inside a soup tureen, between a pressure cooker and a skillet on the dresser.
But what really caught her attention, what made her heart speed up, was Jack standing by the range, eyes wide, looking as startled to see her as she was to see him. Just for a second his face lit up, but a moment later his expression clouded over. Why? Was he not pleased to see her?
‘You’re back,’ she said.
‘Actually, I haven’t left yet. I’ll be off early tomorrow morning.’
Gladys clucked about, insisting that she looked pale and peaky and in need of feeding, before she shepherded Florence and Jack into the sitting room with cups of steaming tea and a plate of Bovril sandwiches and left them to it. There, in Gladys’ cluttered room with a faint whiff of cats, Florence poured out her heart to Jack. Told him about her mother’s coldness and complete lack of interest in anything about their lives in France. And, haltingly, almost in tears again, she told him about Claudette’s rage.
After a few moments of silence he nodded, as if taking it all in.
‘I’m so sorry to put you on the spot like this,’ she added. I—’
