Holiday with the Best Man

‘Yes. And it’s my trip, so we’re going in my car.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he teased.

As he’d expected, Grace turned out to be a very competent driver, but he didn’t have a clue where they were going until she turned off at Bletchley Park. ‘I should’ve guessed you’d plan to visit somewhere like this,’ he said.

‘Why?’

The expression on her face was fleeting, but he’d noticed it. Expecting that she’d be judged—and judged harshly. Although Roland didn’t believe that violence solved anything, he would’ve liked to shake Howard’s mother until her teeth rattled. Grace had been engaged to Howard for four years, so they’d probably dated for a year or so before then—meaning that the woman had had five years to crush Grace’s confidence. And how. The fact that Grace had still had the guts to walk away from the situation was a testimony to her strength. ‘You like numbers, so this place must be fascinating for you,’ he said. ‘If you’d been alive in those times, I think they would’ve asked you to work here, given that you’re good at puzzles.’

‘And if you’d been alive in those times, you might’ve been working on the architecture for the Mulberry harbour or something like that,’ she said.

‘Or working with the guy who was trying to find an alternative material to build the Mosquito planes when there was a shortage of balsa wood,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There was a chemist who was working on making a foam from seaweed that dried into planks that would be as strong as wood.’

She glanced at him. ‘A plane made from seaweed? I assume you’re teasing me?’

‘No, I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I read an article about it in a professional journal. Apparently one of the seaweed “planks” is in the Science Museum in London.’

‘What an amazing story,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to go to the Science Museum now to see it for myself.’

‘Maybe we can go together.’ The words were out before he could stop them. This was dangerous. He wasn’t supposed to be finding shared points of interest for the future. They’d agreed to help each other out, not fall for each other.

‘Maybe we can go next weekend, or on one of the evenings when they open late.’ She gave him another of those shy smiles, then parked the car. ‘We don’t need to queue, by the way. I bought tickets online while you were in the shower this morning, and I’ve already downloaded the multimedia guide to my phone,’ she said.

Typical Grace, being organised and thorough. ‘Sounds good.’ He took her hand and they wandered round, enjoying the sunshine and exploring the different code-breaking huts.

‘I love the way they’ve done this so you can actually feel what it was like to work here—even down to the sounds and smells,’ he said.

‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘I hoped you’d like this—you said you liked museums and buildings, and this is... Well.’

‘It’s brilliant. And I’m going to be totally boring when we get to the displays about how they restored the buildings.’ He kissed her to reassure her that he was happy with her choice of date, but kept it swift so he could keep his feelings in control.

They lingered in the display about the Enigma machines, and the Bombe machine that finally cracked the code. He could see how interested she was, and how her eyes lit up. If he was honest with himself, she fascinated him as much as this place fascinated her. He hadn’t met anyone quite like her before. Lyn had been outgoing and confident—at least, until the baby-making plan had gone wrong—and Grace was quiet and shy and kept a lot of herself hidden. Yet something about her drew him. He wanted to take down all her barriers and let her shine.

They stopped for lunch in the site’s café. ‘So when did you know you wanted to work with numbers?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I just always liked numbers. Dad found me trying to do the number puzzles in the Sunday supplements, so he started buying me puzzle magazines. My favourite ones were where you have to fit a list of numbers instead of words into a grid. Then I moved up to logic puzzles and Sudoku. I, um, won a competition at school for being the fastest at solving them,’ she added shyly.

‘And you never thought about going to university to study maths?’

‘One of my teachers tried to get me to apply to Oxford,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think I was cut out to be a teacher. It seemed a bit pointless spending three years studying and getting into debt when I could’ve been learning on the job and making progress in my professional exams.’