He touched her hand briefly with her own, barely a brush, and yet it was enough.
Lily smiled and looked down, afraid that the expression on her face would be too much for Matthew to see.
An hour later, they were heading towards the Underground station when Tom broke away from Sophie to stumble towards them, a glazed but happy look on his face.
“Look.” His gaze was somewhere between the two of them, so Lily couldn’t tell which one of them he was addressing. “Sophie and I, we’re going to find somewhere. Can you make your own way back?”
“Sophie!” Lily couldn’t keep from calling for her sister, her voice sharpening.
Tom put a large, clumsy hand on her shoulder, a heavy weight she wanted to shrug off.
“I care about her,” he said, his tone the sloppily earnest one of a drunk. “I do. I’m going to marry her, you know.”
Lily stepped back, angry now. “You barely know her, and you’re leaving. Sophie—”
Sophie was leaning against a hoarding, a cigarette to her lips, refusing to look at her.
“She’s a grown-up,” Tom insisted. “She can make her own decisions.”
“Then let Lily talk to her,” Matthew said quietly.
“Go home, Lily,” Sophie called out, sounding tired. “Just go home. I’m fine.”
Lily watched in silent outrage as Tom turned and went back to Sophie, slipping an arm around her waist. Together, both of them stumbling a bit, they disappeared into the darkness, to who only knew where. A hotel? A dark alley?
“I’m sorry,” Matthew said quietly.
Lily pulled her coat more tightly around her, though the evening was warm.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” She shouldn’t feel this desolate. Sophie was simply living her life. And if Tom did marry her, it would be all right in the end, she supposed. “What is going to happen?” she wondered out loud, realizing she wasn’t asking only about Sophie and Tom. “What is going to happen to all of us?”
Realization, sudden and swift, clutched her by the throat, made it hard to breathe. Tom and Matthew would be in France soon, or maybe Belgium, parachuting behind enemy lines, risking their lives. Nothing was certain, not one single thing. All they had was this moment, and Sophie at least had taken it.
She turned back to Matthew, who was watching her with the quiet intensity she’d come to know—and like. “I thought you were a German spy,” she blurted.
Matthew’s expression, strangely, did not change, and he didn’t answer.
“Are you?” she demanded, feeling both desperate and foolish.
“A German spy?” He did not sound as surprised, as incredulous, as she would have hoped. “No.”
Lily shook her head slowly. “But…”
“Why did you think I was?”
“The pigeons. I saw them in your shed. There was a message in German…”
“You went in the shed?” He looked bemused, almost impressed, which confused Lily all the more.
“What are you?” she asked, a bit desperately. “Who are you?”
Matthew stared at her, a long, steady look that made her afraid even as it made her hope. She waited, her handbag clutched to her chest, her heart starting to thud.
“I’m a Jew,” he finally said quietly.
Lily stared. “A Jew.”
“A German Jew. I emigrated to America in 1938, after Kristallnacht.” He waited, while Lily’s mind raced.