Page 27

“Let’s go in and check the boards.”

This time Sylvia forged ahead, weaving through people at the station entrance and into the station hall. It felt as though the entire world was at Paddington. Fresh-faced young soldiers with nary a crease in their uniform mixed with those who had the haunted look of men who had seen too far much over the past two and a half years. Mothers clung to children’s hands, a reminder of the mass evacuations that had taken place right as the war started and then again after the Blitz, and older men wore the uniform of the Home Guard with pride.

Sylvia stopped in front of the board and scanned until she saw it. The 10:04 train.

“Platform ten,” she said, trying to push down the panic tightening her chest.

What was she doing? She was supposed to be answering correspondence before bathing and dressing ahead of taking tea at her neighbor Mrs. Bellington-Norton’s flat, not standing in the middle of a train station, waiting to put her little sister on a train.

Every worry she had pushed aside while Izzie had trained her rose in her throat at once, choking her. Parliament might have put a ban on women serving in any role that resembled combat, but that didn’t mean that WAAFs and other women weren’t in danger all the time. Bombs and bullets and shrapnel didn’t discriminate.

Clearing her throat, Sylvia did her best to smile. “Right, I’m sure we can find platform ten somewhere—”

“Sylvia.”

She gestured over Izzie’s shoulder. “I think, if memory serves, it’s just over there beyond—”

“Sylvia, stop! Why are you doing this?” Izzie demanded.

She took a step back. “Why am I doing what?”

“This!” Izzie cried, sweeping her hand back and forth between them. “Taking me to the station. Playing at happy families.”

“But we are family. You’re my sister.”

Her little sister, the girl who had toddled after her when they were children, who had always wanted to do whatever Sylvia was doing. Four years the elder, it had been Sylvia who had comforted Izzie after Papa’s death when their mother had been too distracted with worry about how they could possibly live without his salary, let alone with the crippling interest on his debts. Sylvia had found Izzie shaking with fear when her sister had had her first monthly courses and had shown her how to wear a belt and what to do with her cloths. She’d been there for Izzie’s first date with a spotty boy from two roads over whose mother had her clothes made at the shop, and it had been Sylvia whom a tearful Izzie had come to after spotting that same boy kissing another girl a week later after he hadn’t even tried to kiss Izzie.

That that little girl was now going off to war petrified Sylvia.

“I appreciate you taking care of the shop while I’m gone, but I do not need you to escort me any farther,” said Izzie.

Sylvia scrambled for a way to explain but found herself falling short. She didn’t know how to speak to her sister with the frankness she once had without plunging them into the middle of an argument.

Finally, she said, “I thought you might want the company.”

“No. You thought that because Mum died and I need you, you get to be my sister again,” said Izzie, her voice icy enough to freeze the entire ticket hall.

“I’ve always been your sister,” she protested weakly.

“You chose to stop a long time ago,” said Izzie.

Sylvia’s natural defensiveness rose up in her. She’d done what she’d had to do, hadn’t she? She hadn’t had Izzie’s and her mother’s talent. All she’d had was youth and beauty and the good luck to meet a man who had loved her enough to overlook her background.

If the roles had been reversed, she was certain Izzie would have done the same.

Still, looking at her little sister with her case in her hand, waiting to board a train to join the WAAFs, she couldn’t bring herself to start that fight.

“I know you don’t believe me, but I’m trying to do the right thing,” she said.

Izzie closed her eyes for a moment as though finding strength. “I appreciate you coming to the train station with me. However, I think we should say goodbye here.”

Sylvia swallowed back the emotion rising in her throat. “Whatever you think is best.”

Izzie stuck out her free hand. “Goodbye.”

She took her sister’s hand. Leather gloves brushed each other, a brief squeeze, and then it was done.

“Good luck,” she said, stepping back. “I’ll write to you.”