“And you think you have the right to decide what’s best for me? To make decisions for me, as if I’m a child?”
“No, of course not. But this is about my family too, my history, and I don’t want to leave it here.” He thought about telling her what else he’d found—the group on Facebook for veterans of the 82nd Airborne and their families, the message he’d sent to a veteran named Guy Wessel, who had written back saying he remembered Matthew Lawson very well. He lived in a senior living facility outside Minneapolis and had invited Simon to visit him. He hadn’t said any of that to Abby yet because he’d been afraid it might be too much for her to take in. Now he knew it was.
She stared at him for another long moment. “So you’re refusing,” she said flatly.
Simon could feel himself start to shut down. It was an instinctive response, like an animal retreating into its shell, a door closing firmly shut. A part of him went dark even as he kept his voice light. “I don’t think we need to put it quite like that,” he said with a little smile. “Let’s just think about this sensibly—”
“I don’t need to think about it at all,” she snapped. “I asked you to stop doing something and you won’t. That’s the end of it now.” Her meaning was clear, as were her actions, as she strode away from him, back to the farmhouse, Bailey clambering up to follow her at a trot, the leafy green branches of the apple trees soon swallowing them both up so Simon was left alone.
Chapter Fourteen
March 1944
In the days after the air raid, Lily walked around in a daze, her mind a welter of indecision. One moment she was certain she should report Matthew to the proper authorities, show the paper she’d tucked in the back of her underwear drawer, and let those in charge take care of the matter. The next moment she told herself to stop being so silly, of course Matthew wasn’t some sort of spy, and she should destroy the slip of paper and simply get on with things.
She thought of trying to translate the few words on the paper, as if that might make a difference, but she didn’t know any German speakers, and she was afraid to ask for a German dictionary from the library, if they even had one, in case it aroused suspicion. Who wanted to know German these days? Then once again she’d tell herself to stop being so ridiculous.
Then she’d walk past one of the posters by the Underground, and see the stern warnings about careless talk costing lives, “Tell Nobody—Not Even Her”, and a shudder of apprehension went through her, and she knew she had to do something.
“Do you think there are many spies in London?” she asked Iris during their lunch break. Iris was prising apart her sandwich and licking off the potted meat, something Lily found revolting, especially when it was accompanied by one of her drippy sniffs.
“Spies? You mean Germans?”
“Yes, what other kind would there be?”
“Oh, I’m sure there are heaps,” Iris said in the lofty tone of someone who liked to think they knew what they were talking about. “Ever so many. One hears things, doesn’t one?”
“Hears things? What do you mean?”
“Well, one only has to look at the posters,” Iris said with a shrug. “A single word and—boom! A plane goes up.”
“Yes, but that’s just to scare us, surely.” Lily was quickly realizing that, as usual, Iris knew no more than she did. She just liked to talk as if she did. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“They wouldn’t put all the posters up if they didn’t have reason, would they?”
“I suppose, but surely they’re just being cautious.”
“Why are you asking, anyway?” Iris leaned forward, her eyes alight. “Do you suspect someone? I’ve always wondered about Miss Challis.”
“Miss Challis!” Lily gave a huff of disbelieving laughter as she quickly checked to see if their supervisor was listening. “Oh Iris, don’t be absurd.”
“She’s so keen. It’s obviously a cover.” Iris let out a hoot of laughter before she licked her bread again. “So who do you suspect?”
“No one,” Lily returned sharply. “I was just wondering.”
“Back to work, girls,” Miss Challis called out, and Iris gave Lily a laughing look before turning back to her typewriter with a sniff.
A few days ago, the HMS Spartan had been sunk by a Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb, with a loss of five officers and forty-one enlisted men. Their trays were full, and there was no time to worry about spies.
As the days passed without her acting, Lily feared her indecision might cost someone something—who even knew what or how much? If Matthew was passing on information from the 82nd Airborne… she pictured the poster Iris had mentioned, of a man shaking hands and wishing a pilot good luck for tomorrow, and then, below, the plane going up in flames. What if her silence caused something like that to happen? What if the letters filling her tray every day were actually her fault?
It was too hideous a thought to contemplate.
But then she reminded herself that Matthew might not be doing anything of the sort. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the pigeons, the note in German. The last thing she wanted to do was get him into trouble, or waste precious time and manpower investigating someone who was perfectly innocent. There had to be a reason for it all. It was just that Lily couldn’t think what it was.
But then it was too late to do anything, because she came home from work one evening just a few days after the raid, to find both Tom Reese and Matthew Lawson on the doorstep, looking very smart in their dress uniforms.
“They’re here to say goodbye,” Sophie cried in a voice whose gaiety sounded almost manic. Lily had barely spoken to her sister since the raid; lost in her own circling, worrying thoughts, she hadn’t paid much attention to Sophie’s huffy silence. “I said we simply must have a photo.” She brandished their father’s Selfix that usually only came out on holidays.