Thirty-two
OUTSIDE the Thorne mansion, the driver stood next to the vehicle as if he’d been told Emmy would only be a short while.
He snapped to action when Emmy emerged from the house and opened the car door for her. Emmy would have walked away from that place on her own two legs, but she had no idea where she was. She got inside.
“Paddington, miss?” the driver said when he was also back inside the vehicle.
Emmy did not want to go back to Thistle House right then. Not as Emmeline, and that was who she firmly was as she stepped out of the Thorne home slathered in recriminations. She wanted more than anything to go to Primrose and fall asleep on the heap of bridal gowns, and never open her eyes again.
She wanted to wake up in the arms of the angels and have them tell her she was worthy of love—to give it and to have it given to her.
But there was no place like that in London. Not for her.
Except perhaps . . .
“The Savoy,” she said.
Thirty minutes later, Emmy was inside the lobby of the hotel where she used to go every Monday on her campaign to find London’s orphans. Mac wasn’t there; it was only midafternoon. He was no doubt in the underground studio at Broadcasting House, working dials and switches as someone leaned over a microphone and described the advance of the Allies across Germany.
She settled into a chair to wait for him.
Emmy was not aware she had fallen asleep until Mac was bending over her, gently shaking her awake and murmuring her name.
When Emmy opened her eyes, she saw a woman standing behind Mac, her hand on his arm, and the utter despair of that singular moment was nearly the end of her. But then the woman walked away, clearly having spied the party she was looking for. Mac was now alone.
“Is it really you?” Emmy said.
He laughed. “I was about to ask you the same thing. What are you doing here?”
Emmy stood and threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. It took him a moment to respond in kind, but then his arms were around her as well. She did not want to start crying into his shirt collar but she did, and once the seal was broken, the tears would not stop coming.
Mac cupped the back of her head in his hand and drew her closer. “Isabel. Is it about Julia?”
She shook her head.
Emmy wanted to tell him why she was suddenly at the Savoy, in tears, and wrapped in his embrace. But to repeat every ugly thing Agnes Thorne had said to her and about her, and relive it, held no appeal. Besides, that was Emmeline’s story, not Isabel’s.
“I just had a really terrible day. Awful.” Emmy pulled away and he immediately handed her a handkerchief. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re in London,” he said, and it was a question that wasn’t a question.
“There was someone I needed to see. It couldn’t be helped.”
He studied her. “And it didn’t go well?”
“No. It didn’t.”
“Sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Quite sure.”
“Can I take you to dinner, then?”
“Will your girlfriend mind?” Emmy said, handing him his handkerchief and making no attempt to hide her disdain.
He laughed. “She’s just a friend who’s a girl, Isabel.”
“Will there be a stiff drink?” Emmy wanted to drown the word whore, whore, whore, which kept echoing like a clanging bell in her head. Drown it in drink.
“Uh. Sure.” Mac gave her his arm and they started to walk toward the lobby doors.
“You look beautiful when you cry, by the way,” he said.
Emmy leaned into him as they stepped into the early evening. Surely there would be no air raids tonight. Germany had nothing left to send up into the air.
“I don’t like it when I cry,” she said. “Makes me feel weak.”
He slid his arm around her waist and kissed her temple. “Oh, but it’s our tears that make us human, Isabel.”
Being on Mac’s arm as they walked, and in his arms as they danced after dinner, and then as they walked past the ruins along the river, Emmy felt something being returned to her after a long absence. The fires had stopped burning, the bombs had stopped falling, the debris was being cleared away, the slabs where buildings once stood were being scraped clean to begin their second life, a life after the war. It was not far off, this new life. A few months, maybe by the end of the year, but she could feel that the turning of the tide was just beyond the horizon. She was ready to feel again. To feel something good. Chocolate on her tongue. New shoes on her feet. Holidays at the seaside. Blank canvases on which to paint. Kisses on her neck and lips.
They went back to the Savoy to see whether Emmy could get a room as she had missed the last train to Oxford. But the hotel was full.
“Come up to my room, Isabel,” Mac offered. “I can sleep on the floor. Scout’s honor.”
And that was the plan.
Mac would have honored it; Emmy was sure of that.
But sometime in the night she dreamed that she was the one trapped in the basement of the Sharington Crescent Hotel, buried in rubble, and no one would help her. She was suffocating and darkness was closing in on her. She would be buried alive.
Worse, Julia was in the rubble with her, and her eyes were open, glassy, and unblinking, like the dead man on the street during the Blitz whose nose and mouth were spattered with blood.
Her screams woke Mac, who was at her side in an instant, shushing her, calming her. And then kissing her. Everywhere. When he realized what was happening, he pulled away, an apology on his lips.
But she drew him back to his bed.