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“Why is that?” she asked, a little taken aback.

“Because that would mean that someone has convinced you that you have to be perfect at every moment.” He touched the brim of his dark gray hat. “Good day.”

She watched his retreating back until she could no longer see him around the edge of the cemetery’s wall.

Chapter Five

Late Monday morning, Izzie stepped out into the road but then jumped back again when a dispatch rider roared around the corner, narrowly missing her. She cried out, clapping a hand to her chest to slow her heart. She was already late. The last thing she needed was to be flattened by a motorcycle on the way to Willie’s office.

The days since Mum’s funeral had been some of the hardest of her life. She’d kept the shop closed, unable to bring herself to face the pity of Mrs. Shelton’s customers. Instead, she’d pulled the quilt off the sofa and wrapped herself up in the large yellow armchair Mum used to sit in to mend at the end of the night. She hardly ate, she hardly drank. Instead, she grieved and slept.

She was an orphan now, all alone in the world. All she had was the shop.

The shop.

That was what had forced her out of the chair that morning. It was what compelled her to bathe and fix her hair. To dot on a precious bit of her last bottle of scent. To pull on one of her last pairs of nylons and her best shoes, don her coat and hat and gloves, and walk to Willie’s office.

Izzie shook her head, double-checked the road in either direction, and hurried across to the door of his building. When she opened it, she found Sylvia sitting primly on the edge of a chair in the entryway. Slowly, she closed the door, examining her estranged sister, whom circumstances had forced her in front of twice in less than a week after so many years apart.

She remembered a time when she’d been proud of Sylvia’s beauty. People always commented on how well the Shelton girls dressed—a proper advertisement for the shop, Mum would say with a satisfied smile—but Sylvia always managed to make whatever she wore look somehow more elegant than it did on the dressmaker’s form. Now, Sylvia might be beautifully turned out, in her burgundy skirt and jacket with a fur coat on her shoulders and the black hat and veil she’d worn to the funeral perched on fashionably curled hair, but Izzie couldn’t muster the pride she’d once had in her older sister.

“Hello,” said Sylvia.

“You’re early,” said Izzie, unable to keep the accusation from her tone.

Sylvia sighed. “How could you possibly disapprove of me being early?”

Izzie lifted her chin. “You were nearly late to Mum’s funeral, but you’re early to her will reading?”

Sylvia rose to her feet, both hands braced on the handle of her handbag. “What are you implying?”

Izzie knew she wasn’t really being fair, but she couldn’t help herself. There were too many years of anger and frustration built up inside of her, and while she could keep it from erupting when she didn’t have to see her sister, with Sylvia standing in front of her now—

Willie’s office door opened, and he stepped into the entryway to greet them. “Good morning, Mrs. Pearsall, Miss Shelton.”

Hearing her oldest friend call her “Miss Shelton” immediately sobered her. She squeezed her eyes shut, recalling all too clearly why they were at Willie’s office. Mum was dead, and they were there to hear the reading of her will.

“Miss Shelton?” asked Willie.

She opened her eyes and found Willie and her sister staring at her.

“Are you all right?” asked Sylvia.

“Perfectly,” she said. And in a way she was, because no matter Sylvia’s diamonds and furs or her Marylebone telephone exchange, Izzie had something more valuable: years of memories with Mum.

“If you would both like to join me,” said Willie, gesturing to the room that served as his office. It obviously had once been the front sitting room of a house, and it still had a plain but solid fireplace surround framing the coal fire that had just begun to glow with heat.

“I apologize that there was no one to greet you both this morning. Miss Hubert, my secretary, decided to join the Women’s Royal Navy Service and received her orders two weeks ago and I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement. Not that anyone ever could replace Miss Hubert,” he said. “She is the soul of discretion and has a mind like a steel trap.”

“Did she wait long for her call-up? I know that the WRNS is one of the more desirable auxiliary services,” said Sylvia, in a way Izzie was certain was meant to show of her superior knowledge of the women’s auxiliary services, even though everyone knew that posh girls went into the WRNS, in part because their uniforms were designed by Edward Molyneux and were far more attractive than the other women’s auxiliaries’ uniforms.

“Not at all,” Willie said. “There are rumors going around that there aren’t nearly enough female recruits to free up the men needed for the front.”

“Well, every little bit helps,” said Sylvia.

Before she could think better of it, Izzie gave a faint snort. When she looked up, she found Willie and Sylvia both staring at her.

“Excuse me,” she said.