‘There’s eggs and sausages from the farm next door and a fresh loaf.’
She smiled. ‘Give me fifteen minutes. No, ten.’
‘Scrambled? Fried? Poached?’
‘Up to you.’
‘Good. Truth is, I can only really do fried.’
She laughed as he left the room. Then she splashed her face and gave herself a quick flannel wash with water from the china jug and bowl on the marble-topped washstand.
Then she put on the dressing gown Jack had given her and brushed her tangled blonde hair, tying it back in a low ponytail. She glanced in the small wall mirror, smiling at her own gunmetal grey-blue eyes, the ingrained dirt on her heart-shaped face and the annoying red spot on herchin. Too bad. She would have to do. Relief at being safe bubbled inside her and as she opened her bedroom door, she could smell the sausages frying in the kitchen. Mmmm. Delicious.
She hurried down the narrow stairs. There was a brick-built outdoor bathroom, a sort of add-on affair, complete with a lavatory, a huge Belfast sink, and an old bath, but no electricity. At night you had to use a torch or a candle. You reached it via the scullery, so at least you didn’t have to go completely outside, and she dashed through before heading for the kitchen.
‘Smells wonderful,’ she said a little later as she joined Jack. ‘I missed a good old British banger when I lived in France.’
He pulled a wry face. ‘Sorry. Burnt them a bit.’
‘The only way sausages are meant to be eaten.’
‘You like them like that?’
‘Absolutely.’
Dark blonde hair framed his strong face, clean-shaven now for the first time, with even his sandy moustache gone. This man who had come into their life so suddenly, who had been a friend to her sisters as well as to the Resistance, had been her way out of France, her means of escape. He smiled at her, his green eyes bright with life. ‘Better?’
She nodded, her mouth full of sausage, then glanced around the oak-beamed kitchen. It was small but immaculate, with a cream-coloured Aga which Jack filled from a store of anthracite in one of the sheds. She’d take over that task when he was gone.
When he was gone.
She didn’t dwell on what else she might do when he was gone. Jack had brought her here so she had somewhere quiet to recover before she made contact with her mother. He hadn’t told her where he would be going, and she didn’t want to think about him leaving, but he was still a member of the Special Operations Executive as far as she knew, albeit with an injured arm.
She forced her mind away from the unsettling subject and looked around her. In the kitchen there was also a built-in wooden dresser, latticed cupboards with wire netting on the inside, hooks hanging from beams, another Belfast sink, and four oil lamps, a nod to the cottage’s fragile electricity supply. The deep window seat, on one side of the pine table, overlooked the water meadow in front of the house. From another window at the back all you could see was the green slope of the hill behind the house where Jack told her the pheasants ran about like lunatics. Even a shadow in the window would be enough to set them off. A massive open fireplace with an oak mantel and a bread oven at the side took up almost one wall and a heavy chopping block lay on a smaller table in the middle of the kitchen.
‘It’s lovely to be here,’ she said.
‘Can’t swing a cat,’ he replied.
‘It’s cosy, and anyway you haven’t got a cat.’
‘Would you like one? Gladys has kittens up at the farm.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I can’t see my mother letting me take a kitten to her cottage.’
‘Fair point. When Dad brings his dog over, do you fancy taking him for a walk?’
‘Just as long as I can have a bath first.’
She could already feel the Devonshire landscape calling her. She loved the countryside – the animals she’d seen on the nearby farm, the brook, the water meadow, the wildlife. And from the moment she had arrived the day before, she’d loved the earthy green smell of it too. It helped revive her spirits and lessened the exhaustion, the homesickness, and the loneliness when she thought of her sisters still in France. It had been more than two months since she’d seen them or been in contact; England was still at war and Hitler was still wreaking destruction in Europe. It might be years before she saw Hélène and Élise again.
Later, after Florence had finished her bath and had scrubbed her body until it was pink and glowing, Lionel turned up, bright and jolly, waving aside offers of tea and saying he needed to get going.
Justin was a young, lolloping black Labrador with heart-melting chocolate eyes, so the three immediately prepared for their walk. There were boots, jackets, waterproofs, and wellingtons in the cottage, accumulated over the years, Jack said, and she could always find something to wear. He had inherited the cottage from his grandmother but had often stayed there in the past so had left plenty of his clothes stored in wardrobes and chests.
It helped to have the dog easing the edge between them and they laughed as he bounded off to bark at pheasants and imaginary rabbits.
After crossing the shallow brook at the front of the house, they were now walking up the bumpy gravelled track they had driven down the day before. There was a valley on the left where a stream meandered, and beyond that a bank of beech, elm, and oak trees that marched up another steep hill. Jack strode on ahead and, as she watched him, she couldn’t help thinking about what they’d been through.
