I had to come back to London to take care of something that matters a great deal to me. Julia insisted on coming with me. I had no plans to bring her and I am sorry if it makes you angry that I did. She misses you. Have no fear about taking her back to Thistle House if you want to. Mrs. Havelock is a very kind woman and Julia likes it there.
I don’t know exactly when I will see you again. Please know that I am doing exactly what you said I should do. You said wishing something doesn’t make it come true. Doing it does.
Someday I hope you will be proud of me.
Emmy
She set the envelope against a teacup on the counter. Then she reached for Julia’s plate and set it to soak with the other dirty dishes. When Emmy turned back to her sister, she offered Julia her hand and she took it.
They walked into the sitting room. Emmy arranged the pillows. Julia crawled up onto the cushions and lay down at once. The missed hours of sleep and the long morning of travel had caught up with her.
Emmy smoothed Julia’s hair away from her face, suddenly grieved that she wasn’t sure when she would see her sister again. After the war, certainly, but how long would that be? If Mr. Dabney and his wife planned to evacuate her to the countryside, perhaps she could convince them to take Julia as well. But . . . Thistle House was such a lovely place and Julia had been so happy there. She didn’t know the Dabneys at all. Emmy had no idea what to expect from them as foster parents. Indeed, she didn’t care. She would suffer through any kind of parenting to be able to learn what Mr. Dabney could teach her.
No, the best place for Julia for as long as the war lasted was with Charlotte.
Emmy bent to kiss her forehead. Julia was already on the edge of sleep.
“Mum will be home in no time.”
“Okay,” Julia whispered.
“Don’t open the door to anyone unless you hear Thea come home, okay? Stay right here on the sofa.”
“Mmm.”
Emmy stood and her sister did not move. “I love you, Jewels.”
But Julia was asleep.
Now that Emmy could concentrate solely on herself, she realized how disheveled she probably looked. She went into Mum’s room to borrow a dress that she hoped her mother wouldn’t miss. She found one near the back, a red jersey knit patterned in tiny geometric designs and three-quarter sleeves. Mum had not worn it in a long while. As Emmy slipped out of her wrinkled dress to put on the fresh one, she figured out why. It was a bit snug, even on her. But it was ten times better than what she had been wearing, and definitely a woman’s dress. She smoothed her hair in her mother’s mirror, using one of Mum’s hair combs to tame her curls. Then she took her wrinkled dress, folded it, and went into Julia’s and her room and laid it on her bed. Back in the front room, Emmy gave her sleeping sister one last peck on her forehead. Then she retrieved her satchel from where she had stowed it by the front door and left the flat, putting the key back under the mat where she had found it.
Knightsbridge was two miles away: a walkable distance if Emmy had not already covered five miles that day and had more time.
She made for the Tube station, drawing no more stares from passersby. Having Julia in tow had made them noticeable. Now that she was traveling alone, she knew she didn’t look like a child. And she didn’t feel like a child. She wasn’t about a child’s business.
Twenty minutes later Emmy was at Knightsbridge station, with plenty of time to find Cadogen Square. She consulted the wall map posted underground and saw that the street she was looking for was only a half mile away. Emmy emerged from the station on Brompton Road and walked to Pavilion, passing walls of sandbags and signs for shelters. Above her the barrage balloons, hovering soundless, threw weird shadows onto the sidewalk.
Knightsbridge was a well-to-do area very much like Mayfair, where Mum went to work every day. Emmy didn’t know how well-off Mrs. Crofton was: She had never mentioned to Emmy where she lived, but Mrs. Crofton’s cousin apparently had money—or had married into wealth. As Emmy approached Cadogen, the residences became more and more elegant and stately. She found Mr. Dabney’s home, a Georgian town house flanked on either side by half a dozen matching, three-story, wedding white homes. Each was flawlessly kept with window boxes of flowers and ferns, and ocean blue front doors that glistened in the late-afternoon sun.
She had five minutes to spare, but she didn’t have the patience to stand outside and wait. Surely the Dabneys and Mrs. Crofton would find her punctuality an asset. Emmy could not stop her hand from shaking as she pressed the bell.
The door was opened by a uniformed maid not much older than Emmy.
“I’ve an appointment with Mr. Dabney. My name’s Emmeline Downtree.” Emmy’s voice squeaked as she spoke her name.
The maid swung the door wide. “Please. Won’t you come in?”
Emmy followed her into a tiled entry. A golden chandelier hung from a tall ceiling. Potted ferns flanked a tall wardrobe, one of only two pieces of furniture in the foyer. A round, marble-topped table in the center of the room was the other. A vase of silver-pink roses adorned it.
“May I take your . . . jacket?” The maid cocked her head and held out her hand. It was a nice day outside. No one was wearing or carrying a jacket.
Emmy handed it to her as her cheeks warmed.
“And your bag?”
Emmy’s hand instinctively felt for the padded corners of the brides box inside her satchel. “I’ll keep this with me, thank you.”
She nodded. “Right this way, miss.”
Emmy was shown to a sitting room that wasn’t a great deal bigger than Mum’s, but the furnishings could not have been more different. Chintz-covered sofas were arranged in the center of the room on top of a thick rug in shades of mauve and russet. A marble fireplace graced one wall, a tea cart another, and an escritoire the last. Paintings of parks, woods, and rose gardens decorated the walls. French fashion magazines from before Paris fell were fanned out on the coffee table. Emmy had never been in such a pretty room before, except on school field trips to royal residences and museums.
“If you’d like to have a seat?” The maid motioned to the tableau of sofas and Emmy sat down, grateful to be off her trembling legs.
The maid left the room and Emmy took several long breaths to quiet her nerves, reminding herself that she had been asked to come to this elegant room. She was invited here.
Emmy reached into her satchel to remove the brides box from the shawl she had wrapped it in so that she would be ready to show Mr. Dabney the sketches. She pulled the bundle onto her lap and unfolded the layers of cloth.
The careful work she had done to calm her anxious heart disintegrated in a blinding instant.
Inside the shawl was Julia’s book of fairy tales.