Page 110 of The Last Night in London
Graham Neville St. John
Queen Victoria Hospital
East Grinstead, West Sussex
I stared at Graham’s name, wondering if it might have been a trick of my tired eyes. All of the searching we’d done to find some record of him, and these five letters had been here the entire time. I blinked, trying to focus on the inked address, on the beautiful penmanship. I thought I’d seen it before, but with all of the letters and handwriting I’d been staring at for the last two weeks, I couldn’t place it. I’d have to show it to Colin, see if maybe he could.
There was no postmark or return address, making me think that the letters might have been hand delivered or included in a care package or some other bundle so that they wouldn’t have gone through the postal system. I flipped the first letter over and found myself staring again, this time at the back of the envelope.
It was still sealed. I quickly looked at the other four and saw theywere all identical, unopened. I checked the edges, looking for a slit that might have been made with a letter opener; I examined the sealed edges, searching for any breach in the seal to show that they had once been opened, but there wasn’t any. These letters had never been read.
I carefully replaced them in their pocket, then returned the rest of the objects to the purse, my mind not willing to settle on any one thing. Too many niggling thoughts circled the drain that my brain had become, too many loose pieces that wouldn’t settle into place. I remembered feeling this way when I saw the hatbox of cut-up photographs, being unable to put a finger on what bothered me about them.
Taking the purse, I walked back to the dining room, where the cut photos were. I needed to talk to someone about my discoveries, to discuss my theories. I looked out of the window, at the bubble-gum-colored sky above Marylebone Road as dawn teased the horizon, and pondered calling Arabella. Just as quickly I dismissed the thought, grabbed my phone, and texted Colin.
Are you up?
It took a minute for him to respond. I was about to text him again, when he replied,I am now.
Great. I’ve got something to show you. Is now a good time? I thought I’d catch you before work.
Since I don’t have to be at work for another four hours, now would be fine.
Okay. See you in about half an hour. Any news of Precious?
Nothing yet. Will call Dad in an hour when he’s awake, but no news so far.
As I began to run toward the back of the flat, I had another thought.Does the tube run this early?
Take a taxi.That was followed by the eye-roll emoji, which made me laugh. He’d never seemed the type to know about emojis, much less use them. Then again, I apparently didn’t know him as well as he knew me.
I threw on clothes and emptied my backpack so I could fit the box purse and the stacks of letters inside, then tucked the hatbox under my arm. As I walked back down the hallway, I stopped in front of the framed photographs of Sophia’s wedding party and the picture of a glamorous Precious stepping out of a car while a dark-haired man stood ready to take her hand. I stared at them for a long moment, my gaze moving from one photo to the next.
Finally, after only brief hesitation, I took them both off the wall and placed them in my backpack, the niggling thought in the back of my head finally beginning to take root.
CHAPTER 32
LONDON
OCTOBER 1940
The Luftwaffe finally arrived on the seventh of September. Like a child who’d placed a winding top on the floor and was surprised to see it spin, Precious looked up at the blackened sky with incredulity. Eva found it odd that the very thing they’d been preparing for and expecting could still come as a shock. With courage found at the bottom of a bottle, she listened to the sirens before she and Precious calmly donned their WVS uniforms, collected their gas masks, and left the flat, just as they’d done hundreds of times before in drills.
Precious headed to the tube station shelter canteen to serve tea to evacuees. Always tea. The British government had sought to buy up the world’s supply of tea at the beginning of the war, knowing it would be detrimental to the morale of its citizens should Britain run out in its time of need.
Eva had chosen instead to man a canteen for the fire brigades, who would be working throughout the night and into the morning. It was much more dangerous work than being inside a shelter. That was why she’d chosen it. She found a certain satisfaction in the violence in the air, in the ground echoing with the staccato beat of the bombs hitting in steady succession. The wail of the sirens and thepercussion of the antiaircraft fire ripping through the night seemed to feed her, to fill the empty spaces inside of her. She wasdoingsomething to help with the war effort. Something that almost made up for the nights spent pretending to be merry. To be doing things for Alex she could no longer consider meaningless or innocent. She was a bird in a cage, unable to escape from the prison of her own making. Her days had fallen into a mindless routine from which she could see no alternative, and for which the endless supply of Alex’s whisky barely smothered her conscience.
During the day, she went to her job at Lushtak’s, showing frocks and gowns to a dwindling clientele, smiling and pretending everything was normal. Once a week, she’d leave work and visit the London Library to check out a misshelved book. As instructed, she’d tear out the title page and decode the hidden message written with lemon juice, using a lit match, and then burn the page after committing the information to memory. She’d fallen into the habit of reading each book she retrieved from the library, to expand her mind, as Mr. Danek encouraged her to do, although now, without Graham, it seemed pointless.
Later, after night fell and the enforced blackout enshrouded the city, she’d drop an empty envelope into the mail slot of the white-stoned terrace house in Chester Terrace before rushing home to change for an evening out with Alex. If she was scheduled for a shift with the fire brigade, she wouldn’t drink at all. But for an evening with Alex, she would drink until she was satisfyingly numb.
She felt again the gambler in her blood, the stakes life or death. And as the nights of whisky and ceaseless bombings continued, she no longer flinched at the crying of an approaching incendiary or a nearby explosion. She would survive, or she would not. She couldn’t find it in herself to care either way.
On a night in late October, Precious sat on the edge of Eva’s bed as Eva prepared for another evening out with Alex. Precious entertained her with stories of the people from the air raid shelter, as well as the gossip she’d heard from the other models about the dwindling number of clients at Madame Lushtak’s. Precious speculated on whatwould eventually happen to all of the employees at Lushtak’s should they run out of customers.
Eva was hardly listening, her thoughts occupied with Alex, with his untenable hold on her. Her desperation to escape. As she applied bright red lipstick to her mouth, she caught sight in the mirror of the diamond bracelet on her wrist. She usually didn’t wear it, but tonight she’d thrown it on, tired of seeing it on her dressing table. The large stones glinted like eyes, capturing her attention. She’d scraped one of the diamonds across the corner of the mirror to see if it would cut glass. The line could still be seen in the corner. She sat, staring back at the glittering stones. They would be worth a lot of money.
She lifted her eyes, aware that Precious had stopped talking. “I’m sorry—what?”
