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Sylvia slipped off her mink and then set about unpinning her hat. She checked her appearance in the entryway mirror, touching first her dark fringe and then the neat roll of hair at the base of her neck to ensure they were still in place. There was no one there to see her save for Mrs. Atkinson, but she’d learned long ago how much appearance mattered.

She remembered the day, age sixteen, when she caught her mother studying her from head to toe. When she’d tilted her head in question, her mother had said, “You’re not clever or talented, Sylvia, so it’s a good thing you’re beautiful.”

She could still recall the way her breath had escaped her lips, almost as though her mother had slapped her, but rather than making her shrink from the mirror, Sylvia had clung to her looks as her one asset. From that day on, Sylvia studied every woman’s magazine she could lay her hands on. She knew her hair, thick and a deep chocolate brown, was good, so she took to styling it in long waves swept off her face to highlight her clear complexion. She saved her shillings and purchased powder, rouge, mascara, and lipstick, darkening her lashes and painting her lips a deep red that stood out against her pale skin. She chose her clothes with care, making sure to show off her neat waist and long legs.

Her mother had tsked, calling her vain whenever she caught Sylvia checking her appearance in the dress shop’s triptych mirror, but it was her looks that had captured the attention of Hugo Pearsall. When he’d proposed a few months later, she’d believed she had every tool she needed to hone herself into the sort of wife a genteel Harley Street doctor might expect.

So how had she lost him?

“Mrs. Atkinson, I shall take tea in the drawing room please,” she said.

The housekeeper nodded and made her quiet retreat to the kitchen. Sylvia waited until she heard the soft sounds of water running to fill the kettle. Mrs. Atkinson would be busy for a least a quarter of an hour.

With a strange mixture of dread and anticipation, she made straight for Hugo’s study.

The polished door handle twisted without a sound, and she let herself in. Closing the door behind her, she turned to survey her husband’s domain. Everything about the room was masculine, from the heavy club chairs to the paintings of hunting dogs hung on the walls that she was secretly glad were confined to his study. Even the air smelled faintly of man, the remnants of cigar smoke, ink, and coal lingering long after Hugo’s last visit home.

Sylvia forced one foot in front of the other until she had rounded the huge desk that had once sat in the study of Hugo’s grandfather’s country home. Her husband had insisted that it come with them to their flat, even though the men who moved their furniture in had looked at it with great skepticism and more than a little dread. In the end, it hadn’t been able to make the turn through the front door and had had to be hauled in through the study window by pulley, creating a great spectacle as the neighbors gathered to watch it rise from Nottingham Court’s sweeping drive.

Sylvia’s hand shook slightly as she reached for the desk’s right-hand drawer. It opened without protest, revealing the contents nestled in red flocked lining. Two bottles of ink, a spare pen, some blotting paper, a letter opener, and a stack of letters.

She counted out one, two, three, four, five of them until she reached the sixth. She set the first five leaning against the blotting paper in the drawer and drew out the sixth letter, opened the envelope, and freed the paper inside.

She unfolded the letter. It was typed—clearly the sender was concerned that a casual observer might recognize their penmanship—and the paper crinkled as she handled it.

My darling Hugo,

Whenever I write you one of these letters it reminds me how little we are together. I want more of your time, your body, everything. Instead, I must content myself with writing to you in hopes that this letter might stir up in you even a fraction of the feeling that I hold for you.

I love you, my darling. I know you will think me rather vulgar for confessing that only in a letter, but I cannot pretend any longer. I cannot sign off with “All my love” and not let you know that that love is not a mere platitude. It is as real as the air we both breathe.

I know you say that we must wait until after this bloody war has ended, but I do not want to wait. Each time my husband comes home on leave, I find it harder to hide my revulsion. I do not know if I could stand the inevitable day when we all cross paths—you with Sylvia and me with him. It is difficult enough knowing that whenever we are in public I cannot even look at you for fear that someone might suspect.

Write to me soon and let me know when it is that I can see you again. You have me forever…

All my love,

X

Sylvia set down the letter and closed her eyes, letting the pain wash over her.

Once, when she’d been a new bride, she’d been caught in the rain going from one shop to another in Knightsbridge and ducked into a restaurant to shelter. She’d been speaking to the maître d’ when she’d spotted Gerald, a friend of Hugo and hers, tucked into a cozy table in the far corner of the restaurant. The woman he was sitting with and whose hand he was holding was not his wife but rather Margot Weaving, who was married to one of Hugo’s fellow club members.

Shocked, Sylvia had backed out of the restaurant and into the rain, walking as fast as decorum would allow her until she reached the welcoming doors of Harrods. Only then, while gasping for her breath, had she allowed herself to think about what she’d just seen. An affair being conducted in public.

When Hugo had returned from his surgery that evening, she’d barely been able to contain herself. It had all come out in a rush, but when she finished her story she realized that her husband didn’t look horrified at all. He appeared to be amused.

“Well, what did you expect, darling?” he asked.

“What do you mean what did I expect? Gerald’s married to Caroline. We had them for cocktails before the theater in March!”

“Yes,” he said slowly, as though explaining to a child, “but he and Caroline already have two boys and that girl of theirs.”

She blinked, stunned. “So because they already have children, it’s acceptable for him to have an affair?”

She whispered the last word, eliciting a laugh from her husband.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that Gerald should go walking around announcing it to every Peter and Paul, but I’m hardly surprised. She spends all her time in the country, and he practically lives at his club, not to mention that he’s always looking for an excuse to race that new Aston Martin of his. They must hardly see one another.