Into the Darkest Day

Lily tried to smile; she didn’t want Sophie to see how her words had hurt her. “Does there?”

“One day you’ll discover just how brave you are,” Sophie said with a laugh. “I’m sure of it.” She turned away to give her reflection one last satisfied glance before her lips pursed and her eyes flashed again. “I know you think I’m being reckless, but I need to do something, Lily. I can’t wait this war out for another minute, hoping something will happen to me.”

“But, Sophie, what do you want to happen?”

“Something. Anything.” Sophie turned from the mirror and went to the window, the blackout curtain drawn across the night sky. She raised one hand towards the heavy, dark material, and for a tense second Lily thought she might pull it open, just because she could. “Aren’t you tired of the waiting? We’re sitting out the war at our typewriters, Lily.”

“As are a thousand other girls,” Lily returned. “Ten thousand.” She wouldn’t be ashamed of what she did. “Besides,” she pointed out as reasonably as she could, “meeting Lieutenant Reese at the pub is hardly some sort of act of wartime bravery.”

“It’s an act of something,” Sophie returned fiercely. “At least I’m doing something. Feeling something. I don’t care if it gets me in trouble. Right now I don’t care if it gets me killed.”

“Sophie.”

“I mean it.” Sophie turned to face her, a wild glitter in her eyes, her whole body seeming to vibrate with the force of her emotion. She looked strange and fierce and frighteningly beautiful. “Don’t you dare try to stop me.”

“How could I?” Lily shook her head slowly. “But what if there’s an air raid? You’ll be caught out…”

“Then I’ll go to one of the Tube station shelters.”

“But Mother and Father will realize you’re not home then.”

Sophie hesitated for a fraction of a second before she gave another shrug. “Then that’s what happens.”

“They’ll be angry.”

“What can they do? I’m not a child, and I won’t be treated like one.” Sophie tossed her head. “Anyway, there was already an air raid last night.”

“You know that doesn’t mean anything.”

“I don’t care.” Despite her declarations that she was not a child, Sophie was starting to sound petulant.

Lily sank onto her bed, knowing there was nothing she could do.

“I just want to have fun, Lily,” Sophie insisted, her mood making one of its li

ghtning shifts as she reached out her hands to catch Lily’s own. “Is that so much to ask? Everything is so dreary, so dull. I just want to live a little.” She squeezed Lily’s hands, her eyes wide, her voice wheedling.

“I know you do.” Lily tried to smile. Really, Sophie wasn’t getting up to much at all. It just felt like it, with the secrecy, the ferocity of her feeling, and even the dullness of their lives. “Be careful, will you?” she said as she gave her sister’s hands a squeeze back.

“Of course I will.”

Sophie slipped her hands from Lily’s and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Lily strained her ears to hear the telltale creak on the stairs, but her sister was impressively quiet. Lily couldn’t even hear the front door open and shut, and she knew her parents, tucked in their beds, wouldn’t either. They wouldn’t dream of Sophie slipping out like this.

With a sigh, Lily got into bed. Her worry for her sister was shadowed by something more revealing—a twinge of envy. Sophie had said she’d discover how brave she was one day, but it certainly hadn’t happened yet. Why couldn’t she be as daring as her sister? What if she’d sent a postcard to Matthew Lawson’s billet? Not that she knew where he was, but Sophie might. She could be the one meeting him at the pub, or going for a late-night walk in the Common. She could be having an adventure, learning to live a little, after all.

But Lily hadn’t even thought of any of it. None of it had ever—not once—so much as crossed her mind, a delicious flicker of “what if”. It annoyed her that it hadn’t occurred to her, as much as that she hadn’t actually done it. Could she not even think of something daring to do?

Even now that she had, Lily knew she wouldn’t be so bold. She hadn’t even asked Matthew to set a time when he’d said he hoped he saw her again, and now maybe she never would, despite what he’d suggested. Perhaps I shall see you again? Had he meant it, or had it just been a pleasantry, a way to end a conversation? She could have found out, asked him when he next had leave. She could have smiled and batted her eyes and given him a knowing look… or, heavens, just smiled. Perhaps that would have been enough.

Lily let out a groan, cursing her own cowardice. She wasn’t brave, and she never had been, not like Sophie. It had been Sophie who had waded into the deeper water while Lily had splashed in the shallows, on their summer trips to Brighton. Sophie who had accepted the dare to stick out her tongue at one of the boys at school, or throw a snowball at the milk float one icy winter. Sophie who had come downstairs in bright red lipstick when she was fourteen, and her mother hadn’t made her wash it off, even though Lily knew she hadn’t liked it one bit.

But those were all just childish pranks, and Sophie was no longer a child. She was a woman, determined to live out her own destiny, and, right now, for better or worse, that seemed to include Lieutenant Tom Reese.

Still, Lily told herself as she plumped her pillow, it wasn’t as if Sophie was being truly outrageous. She was simply slipping out to the pub. It wasn’t a big to-do at all. And yet, when she recalled that manic glitter in her sister’s eye, Lily suspected that, in some strange way, tonight had the power to change everything.

She tried to wait up for Sophie’s return, and managed to well after the pub had closed, but at some point after midnight Lily fell asleep, only to wake to the dreaded and far too familiar wail of the air-raid siren, its rising and falling sound as plaintive and distressing as a woman’s heartbroken cry.

She rose and dressed with hurried, automatic movements, the room a sea of black all around her as she fumbled for her dress and thrust her legs into the heavy lisle stockings she wore for work. She couldn’t even see Sophie’s bed, but she sensed her sister’s absence, and as she went to the door, she ran her hand along the length of the mattress, only to find it cold and empty as she’d expected, yet even so her stomach clenched in fear.