Mac pocketed the card and took a swallow from his own coffee cup. “Well, I am happy to obey but I am not out on the street as much as the other reporters here at the Savoy. I am a sound engineer and I spend most of my time three flights down in a bunker.”
“A what?”
Mac went on to explain that he worked at nearby Broadcasting House for CBS, Edward Murrow, and a clutch of other radio journalists tasked with keeping the people of the United States informed about a war that was now just one ocean away from them. He also told her he was twenty-six, hailed from Minneapolis, and that he had actively sought a London posting after Britain declared war on Germany. He told her being there helped him feel like he was a very small part of holding back the Nazis, since America had yet to join in the battle against Hitler. He had worked at a CBS radio station in Manhattan before requesting to be posted in London when he learned a reporter friend of his from college would soon be in London himself.
“I see,” Emmy said, finding that she was sad Mac would likely be of little help to her. She hadn’t had anyone to talk to about something other than the war in weeks. Something about him was calming and inviting.
“What about you?” Mac said.
“What?”
Mac smiled. “I said, what about you? What were you doing before the war?”
I didn’t exist before the war, Emmy thought as she pondered a suitable answer.
“Unless you don’t want to tell me,” he continued.
But she found she did want to tell him. She wanted to exist in someone’s eyes. She wanted to be more than just a spectral vapor who lacked an endlessly long string of yesterdays. Pretending to be Isabel Crofton meant she was entitled to a past. It was her right and privilege now to come up with one.
“My mother and I owned a shop, Primrose Bridal, near Saint Paul’s. She was killed the weekend the Blitz began and our flat was destroyed. I am living at the shop for the time being.”
“Oh! I’m so very sorry. And your father?”
Emmy set the fork down on the plate, the ruse now feeling all too real. “He died some years back.”
“Isabel, I’m so very sorry for your loss. Truly. I can’t imagine how hard this must be. And here you are caring for the needs of homeless children when your own sorrow must be so great.”
Emmy smiled wanly. “I know what it’s like to have your parents taken from you and your home destroyed. I know what it’s like to feel lost and alone. It’s terrible.”
He asked her about her work with the WVS and what were her favorite things to do before the war; as they talked, Emmy sensed that Mac seemed interested in her, attracted to her—an unnerving and stimulating concept. Emmy had never had a boyfriend before, and had been kissed only once, the spring before at a school dance. It had been a sloppy affair that she hadn’t looked forward to repeating anytime soon.
Emmy could tell Mac thought she was pretty, also a new and intriguing concept. With Mum’s clothes on and her comb nestled in her hair, it occurred to Emmy that she might actually look like her mother. Mum had always drawn the stares of men, even in her maid’s uniform. Emmy liked that Mac thought she was pretty. She considered for only a moment that he was actually eleven years older than she, not the eight that he believed she was when she told him her age. But why should that matter? She was Isabel. She was eighteen.
When she left the Savoy a few minutes later, she could feel Mac’s gaze on her.
By the end of October, Mac was hanging about the Savoy dining room on Monday mornings, making sure he didn’t miss Emmy’s visit. He would save a Danish or sweet roll from his breakfast and would invariably ask her to sit and enjoy it.
Emmy in turn started looking forward to those borrowed moments of pleasure. That anticipation caught her by surprise, and she suspected it was dangerous to feel that way about their visits, which was something Mac picked up on from the get-go and apparently found alluring.
On the morning of October 28, Emmy arrived at the Savoy feeling particularly defeated. Julia had been missing for nearly two months and Emmy was no closer to finding her than she had been the day she disappeared. Mac poured her a cup of coffee and asked her to sit and tell him what was wrong.
His compassion was attractive. In fact, everything about him was striking that morning. The stubble on his chin, the timbre of his voice, the muscles in his arms as he handed Emmy a Danish. She didn’t want to admit she was drawn to him. She wanted to believe that only Julia mattered. But that morning Emmy could sense how weak she was. Resolve, her constant companion for the last two months, had apparently been left behind with the wedding dresses she had slept on. She was alone with a handsome man who reached out and squeezed her hand.
“Is everything all right?” he said.
The pretense that she had been carefully constructing threatened to crumble. She felt her old self clawing its way to the surface. Emmy made her hand a fist under Mac’s as if to smash back down the girl she had been before.
“Isabel?”
Emmy shook her head to keep the ghostly remains of her former life from settling back into the folds of her mind. “No!” she said. To herself. Not to Mac.
But he thought Emmy was answering his question.
“What has happened?” he said, stroking Emmy’s balled fist, forcing her to relax her fingers.
No! She could not go back. There was no going back. There was only the task at hand. She was Isabel.
“I—I’m just missing my mum, I guess,” Emmy whispered. It was as good an answer as any.
Mac lifted her palm off the table and enclosed it in his. “I’m so sorry about that.”
Emmy was mesmerized by the warmth and strength in his tender grip. She hadn’t been touched—by anyone—in weeks; not since Mum put her hand on her cheek on the night she died. Emmy wanted to be in Mac’s arms. She wanted Mac to pull her to his chest and kiss her forehead and tell her everything was going to be all right. She wanted to be enfolded in his embrace. And to disappear in it. For good.
A tiny exhale escaped her as she vented the tremendous pull of that desire to be held and loved.
“What can I do for you?” Mac said as he squeezed her hand.
Emmy summoned Isabel from the foggy place to which she had wafted away. She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“There must be something I can do.”
As Emmy felt Mac’s hand strong and protective over hers, and as she saw in his eyes a longing to be close that she didn’t need to be eighteen to recognize, she decided to trust him. To let him in, only halfway, so that she could have what she wanted—his help—and he could have what he wanted—a closer relationship with her.
“Maybe there is something,” Emmy said.
“Yes?”
Emmy leaned forward, imploring him. “I’m looking for a young girl. Her name is Julia Downtree and she’s seven. She disappeared on the first night of the Blitz. She was left home alone by accident and her street was bombed. None of the neighbors have seen her. She’s not on any of the casualty lists. The police have not seen her. She’s not in any hospital. She’s just . . . gone.”
“Is she someone you know personally?” Mac said, obviously puzzled by Emmy’s interest in one particular child.
Emmy had a split second to decide how she would answer. She knew he would double his efforts to help her if she told him the truth. Emmy didn’t have to tell him everything. But she could tell him this.
“She’s my half sister. And I’m the one who left her alone. I didn’t think she’d be alone for very long. It just . . . It just happened that way. I was on my way to her when the first bombs fell.”
With his other hand, Mac reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew a slim notepad, and placed it on the table.
“Julia, you said?” He pulled his other hand off hers and withdrew a pencil from the same pocket. He began to write.
“Downtree,” Emmy replied.
Mac glanced up at Emmy, wondering, she supposed, whether she was going to explain how she came to have a half sister.
“We’ve the same father and that’s all I am going to say about that.” The less Emmy entwined her two lives with explanations, the better. Besides, a gentleman didn’t need to know any of the supposed sordid details.
She said nothing else and Mac quickly lowered his gaze back to his notepad.
“She’s only seven,” Emmy continued. “Blond hair. The flat where she lived with her mother was off Queen Victoria in Whitechapel.”
“And where is her mother, if I may ask?”