Page 106

I don’t know why I’m telling you this except that the thought of seeing you again is the one thing sustaining me through this week. I’m delighted that Sergeant Martin wants to see Alexandra again and, although she is slightly skeptical that he is just being kind, she’s agreed to come on Friday.

I cannot wait until I can kiss you again.

Yours,

Izzie

Chapter Thirty-One

Sylvia eased her soft cream cardigan from off her shoulders and slipped her arms into it, wrapping the two fronts tight across her stomach. Despite the fact that it was the nineteenth of May, three days of soaking rain had left her unable to shake the deep chill of damp air that settled into her bones.

She glanced out of the door of the shop’s office and across the empty workroom. It would be warmer in the flat, she knew, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to mount the flight of stairs yet. Not until her eyes burned from the effort of staying open. Only then would she go upstairs and try to sleep.

When she’d left Nottingham Court the previous week, she hadn’t had a plan. She’d thought she might avoid the night porter, but he had been in the lobby when she’d appeared with her cases under her arms, so she’d asked him to hail her a cab. A middle-aged woman, who’d no doubt taken up driving to free up a man to fight, had pulled up the building’s sweeping drive and rolled down the window of the cab.

“Where would you like to go, dear?” the cabbie had asked.

Without even thinking, Sylvia had said, “Number four Glengall Road in Maida Vale, please.”

Because, really, where else could she go?

Yet when the cabbie had pulled up to the flat’s door, she’d hesitated in the back seat. She had never imagined she would be back here again. The shop had been one thing, but the flat?

She’d met Hugo and that was supposed to be it. He was her husband. He was her life.

Until she realized that he’d never really felt that way about her.

With a sigh, she’d hauled her suitcases out of the cab and up the flat’s stairs, and collapsed into a deep sleep on the bed in the room she’d once shared with Izzie.

Over the past few days, she’d pulled up the drawbridge on her life, ignoring everything happening outside of the shop. She’d written to Lady Nolan, making her excuses for missing the committee meeting. She’d put off a dinner she’d been invited to by the wife of a literary critic she’d met at the London Library. When Miss Reid raised a brow after spotting her coming through the door joining the flat’s staircase and the shop, she’d simply put her head down and carried on with her day.

However, despite plunging herself into her work, Sylvia couldn’t resist the compulsion to replay every aspect of her marriage, looking for where it had gone wrong. She’d thought of all the nights she’d gone out with Hugo and his friends, but instead of the happy memories she’d once had she remembered the little barbs of criticism he’d laid on her that she’d brushed off as her own sensitivity. She remembered how he’d pushed her to outfit herself with a new wardrobe after their marriage and how he’d come with her to nod or shake his head at her selections. She thought of his objections to signing the annual Christmas card she sent to her mother and sister. But mostly she remembered every smile he’d bestowed upon other women, now suspicious of what might have been behind them.

She blamed him for his affair and all of the horrible ways he’d treated her, but she also wondered what portion of blame belonged to her.

She had said yes to the wrong man. Perhaps he had been right at some point, when she had been the young, wide-eyed girl eager to please, but she hadn’t stayed naive. She’d become a woman—a complicated person with ambitions all her own. And he hadn’t wanted that.

She could see all of the facts laid out so plainly before her now, but that didn’t make it any easier to admit that the life she’d built for herself had turned into a disappointment.

She told no one about her slow realization that the inevitable had happened. Not Miss Reid. Not Izzie. Not Claire or Lady Nolan or any of the other ladies on the committee. Neither had she spoken to Hugo since she left. He hadn’t telephoned the shop or come around. She didn’t even know if he was aware that she was no longer living at the flat, although she supposed that Mrs. Atkinson had likely raised the alarm. She’d seen the housekeeper once two afternoons ago when she’d returned to retrieve a few more things and pick up her post. Mrs. Atkinson, teary-eyed, hadn’t asked any questions but instead had left a cup of tea for her on her writing desk in the sitting room. It was, Sylvia supposed, a tacit sign of understanding.

She sighed. Hugo and their marriage were a mess that she would have to confront at some point, but for now she had the lifeline that was the shop.

I hope that, as it has for me, the shop will take care of them when they need it most.

She had to admit, her mother’s words had certainly come true.

A knock on the front door set her heart leaping in her throat. She glanced at her watch. It was past eight o’clock. Who could be—?

William.

She hurried through the shop to open the front door and let him in.

“Hello,” he said, rain dripping off the brim of his hat as he lifted it off his head.

“Hello. No sandwiches tonight?”

He played with the brim, scooting the felt between his index fingers and thumbs. “I know it probably isn’t exactly what you’re used to, but I don’t suppose you would fancy a drink at the pub, would you?”