All the ATA girls had come here to be together. Most, like Dash, were dressed in their dark navy uniforms, not having been aware of the tragedy before they arrived. Before leaving the house, she had pulled on her fur-lined jumpsuit and boots, secured the knife she always strapped to her calf, then grabbed the bag carrying her helmet, goggles, and her father’s compass.
She’d dropped everything on the floor of the common room when she learned what had happened.
There had been so many flights lately, everyone was exhausted. Two weeks ago, Dash had flown six flights in one day, four the next. Nobodyever told the ATA pilots anything, but they had all noticed the recent uptick. Something big was happening out there.
Yesterday, for Stella’s last flight of the day, she had flown a Mosquito Mk. VI through miserable visibility to the temporary airfield of B-10 Plumetôt. Every one of them had done a trip like that. Nothing to it. Dash could almost picture Stella in that cockpit, impatient to land. Dying to light up a cigarette, eager to climb onto a train that would bring her back to Hamble and her bed at last. But the plane had crash-landed on the tarmac. No one would ever know if mechanical issues, weather problems, or pilot error was to blame.
Stella had died on impact.
Not one of the women had been left untouched by the tragedy. And no one wanted to talk about it. Especially with Dash or Violet.
Dash’s gaze went to Stella’s best friend, pale and diminished on the couch across the room. Violet glanced up at Dash, and they exchanged the same grim smile Dash had seen on her mother’s face at her father’s funeral. Publicly, Violet was so strong. But when she returned to work tomorrow and climbed into her plane, she would be on her own. When she pushed in the throttle then burst into the sky, grief would hit her like a fist. The clouds floating past would be reminders of Stella’s cigarette smoke, the atmospheric blue the same as her friend’s irises. The freedom whistling past her wings would be the loss, screaming through her heart, then gone.
Someone lit a cigarette, and Dash was carried back in time. Stella had an ingenious method to time her flights. After years of chain-smoking, she claimed to go through a cigarette in seven minutes flat. If she finished four cigarettes through the duration of her flight, well then, she landed twenty-eight minutes after takeoff.
Would Dash spend the rest of her life thinking of Stella every time someone lit a cigarette?
She let herself think about Pete, and about the promise she’d forced out of him on that final morning together. It had seemed a strange request to both of them, insisting that he find Dot if anything ever happened to her. Dash hadn’t known where that idea had come from, but there it was, and she was glad it was out there. Because now, standing inthe hushed common room, grieving Stella, she understood. Things really did happen. Awful things.
Every girl in the Air Transport Auxiliary sensed the empty seat in the room. It was a stinging reminder that no matter how many planes they’d flown, or how high they flew, they were not indestructible. A similar ending could be waiting for any of them, just an airfield away.
Mrs. Farnham, Hamble Airfield’s house mother of sorts, walked in at that moment and cleared her throat. “I find it extremely distasteful that I am forced to ask at a time like this,” she said, “but I have no choice. I need a pilot to go to France right away.”
The room was still. Everyone was staring at Mrs. Farnham, but no one knew what to do.
Dash stepped forward. “I’ll go.”
She grabbed the chit from Mrs. Farnham’s hand, then her coat from a hook on the wall. She wasn’t sure why she’d volunteered, but it made her feel better. The common room was claustrophobic with grief. Dash needed fresh air. Wind in her hair. Freedom. There was only one place she was going to find all that, and it wasn’t on the ground. She glanced at the chit and managed a smile. She’d be flying a Spitfire.
As she reached for the door, it burst open, and a soaking wet mailman stomped inside. She stepped to the side to let him in, then walked past. She couldn’t get to that plane fast enough.
“Oh, Miss Wilson!” the mailman called, catching her sleeve. “I have a letter for you.”
“Thank you.”
She tucked the envelope into her flight suit’s inside pocket and promptly forgot about it. She was not in the mood to read anything. She’d get to it after landing.
The tarmac was shiny from the earlier rain. Dash dodged as many puddles as she could without checking her stride, wary of an incoming bank of clouds. Her destination was B-21, a temporary landing ground in France in a location called Sainte-Honorine, which was interesting to her. Dash hadn’t crossed the English Channel before, but she had flown over the coast. Outof necessity, the ATA sometimes ferried replacement planes into occupied countries, but that could get dodgy, with all the ack-acks. Temporary airfields popped up around France and Belgium out of necessity, basic facilities with steel plank–surfaced runways, but they closed just as quickly. Violet had flown into one just last week, but when she’d arrived, the squadron that had requested the plane had already moved on. She’d been forced to keep flying to the next temporary airfield on the list. Until recently, only male ATA pilots had been sent on those flights. Other than Stella and Violet, Dash knew only a few women who had flown into either France or Belgium.
Dash climbed into the cockpit then went through the checklist, oblivious to the rain that had begun pattering overhead. She felt it as soon as she pushed the canopy back for takeoff, and she pulled down her goggles to see better. A little rain wasn’t going to stop her, though she’d have to be surefooted upon landing. She hit the throttle, impatient to get away from all this sadness. As the Spitfire left the pavement behind, she left her miseries, loosening the strain in her chest. In the sky was where she needed to be. Up here on her own, away from grief. The sky, like her maple tree when she was a child, was the place where she went to heal.
From way up high, she could see the blocks of grey in Portsmouth, the war ships loading and unloading troops and supplies. Much more activity than usual these days. Farther west of her line was Bournemouth, and she smiled as her thoughts went to Pete. She wondered if he was flying today. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to pass each other in the sky?
Soon she was over the Channel, that long, unforgiving body of water that intimidated all the girls. If they ever got in trouble over the water, there would be no chance of finding an emergency landing field. Through the rain, Dash saw the coast of France, and she breathed a little easier. She was almost past the danger zone. The land ahead was covered in fog, and she thought back to the map in her head, trying to pinpoint the location of the landing strip at Sainte-Honorine. It was a pretty name, she thought. She wondered if the village was, too, or if it had been destroyed by the war, like so many other things.
She was forced to pay close attention to her location now, because therain had closed in alarmingly fast, coming hard, carried by troublesome winds. It was soon too dark for her to feel comfortable, and she flinched at flashes of lightning. Before long, the rain smashing against her canopy was so loud, she wouldn’t have heard someone if they yelled in her ear. Wrapped in the darkness and buffeted by rising winds, real concern spread in Dash’s chest. She had no lights, no maps, no radio, and now that she was engulfed in storm clouds, she could barely see the ground.
Instinctively, she pushed open the throttle and pulled the control stick back, climbing steeply so she could fly above the storm. Maybe she’d find an escape route from up there. The engine of the Spitfire rumbled agreeably as she rose to two thousand, three… she burst into blinding sunlight above the clouds and levelled out at four thousand feet. She breathed easy for a moment, then dread set in. The silhouette of the Spitfire drifted across the forbidding grey surface beneath her, seeking out any possible break but finding none. Even from up here, she couldn’t see any way to get away from the storm—the entire horizon was blanketed by clouds. Bursts of lightning came more often now, lighting the clouds below like giant fireflies.
She had to be getting close to her destination, but she’d never be able to see anything from up here. Her only option was to descend and hope for some sort of window. Bracing, Dash lowered the Spitfire’s nose back into the rain clouds and jumped when lightning struck nearby. Lower and lower she flew, nearing the three thousand feet mark, scouting for an opening while she monitored her altimeter and fuel gauge. At that altitude, the wind tossed the plane like a plaything.
Then lightning struck, and Dash’s world flashed a violent, brilliant white. A deafening crack snapped one wing, throwing the Spitfire into a sharp turn, and she grasped the stick, hanging on for all she was worth. With adrenaline flooding through her, she pulled back hard, levelling out the plane as well as she could, but the wings teetered perilously. The engine burst into flame, snapping fire backward toward the windshield, and then it stalled completely. Breathing hard, Dash hauled the nose up again, but without power, the plane kept sinking. She watched the altimeter needle spin faster and faster as she fell helplessly through the sky.
The earth suddenly opened up below her and she checked the dials.Two thousand feet, her mind reported.Too low, too fast.A thick carpet of trees and rocks streaked beneath her wings, but she could see no possible landing strip. She was going to crash. She was going to die.
“No, I’m not!” she screamed. She still had one option. “All right, Margaret Wilson. Let’s see if you’re as tough as you pretend to be.”
Her parachute was snug, connected exactly as it should be across her chest, with the straps secured around her thighs. She knew she was too low. She clearly remembered telling Jack Reimer that twenty-five hundred feet was the minimum, and she was now barely hanging on to two thousand. She twisted to see behind her, but when she moved, the plane angled again, and the pull of a spiral began. She’d seen enough to know that if she bailed from this angle, she risked hitting the tail on the way out. There had to be another way.
