“Where is Cora?” I asked.
There was a second of silence as everyone stared at me. “I sent her back to the party,” Dottie said. “She’s to tell the guests there was an emergency in the kitchen. Her parents will help her see everyone out. I think they’ll be forgiving, since this is a family emergency.”
Next to me, Alex shifted, and I clenched my knees together, dropping my gaze.
“It’s all my fault,” Alex said. “I’m sorry again.” He took a breath. “Since the war I’ve been a prisoner of the Germans. They took me almost the minute I parachuted from my airplane.”
“All this time?” Robert asked, his eyebrows rising. “You look well fed for a prisoner.”
“Don’t interrupt,” Dottie snapped at him. “Alex is explaining.”
Alex turned his gaze to his uncle. “It was rough at first,” he said, “but I come from a good family, and I was valuable to them.”
“It makes sense, Papa,” Martin said. “Alex has German relatives, and he knows the language.”
“Yes,” Robert said, calculations moving swiftly behind his eyes. Despite how much he’d doubtless had to drink, he looked as sober right now as I felt. “I’m sure that was most useful.”
“It was best to wait it out,” Alex said. “There was no use trying to get home until after the war was over. There was a bureaucratic mix-up, and I wasn’t on any of the lists.” I felt him glance at me. He must know, then—he must know how I had begged the War Office and the Red Cross for any word. I sat numb, staring at my hands in my lap, unable to meet his eyes. Alex paused only briefly, and then continued. “After the Armistice, I got sick.”
“What happened?” Dottie asked.
“Influenza,” Alex replied. “I nearly died. They transported me to a hospital near the Polish border while I was feverish. En route, I was somehow stripped of my papers and my identity disks—I was unconscious at the time, and I have no idea what happened. But I woke up in a hospital east of Breslau, half delirious, with no identity. Eventually, as I slept, it was determined that I was a German, and they began the paperwork to keep me there.”
Influenza. I remembered lying alone in our bed in the Chalcot Road flat, my throat scraped raw, my every nerve and muscle alive with pain.
“My God, Alex,” Martin said softly. “What a mess. I’m amazed you lived through it.”
“When I started to recover,” Alex said, “I was told only that I was going to be sent home. It gave me great comfort for a while, until I realized I was to be kept in the wrong country. I had no papers, no proof of identity, and my German relatives fled the country at the beginning of the war. I had somehow been identified as a German airman who had gone missing three months before—they thought I had been taken captive by mistake. My RAF uniform was long gone by then, and I was in hospital clothes. I had to convince them that I wasn’t who they thought I was.”
“They didn’t notice when you told them they were wrong?” Robert asked.
“Of course they noticed.” If Alex was irked by Robert’s skepticism, he showed no sign. “I told them I was English. But I was speaking to them in fluent German, so how could they know I was telling the truth? The paperwork they had said otherwise. I was far from the consulate, which was already overwhelmed, and I had no money. You have no idea of the chaos in that part of the Continent in the aftermath of war. I eventually spoke to the right people and convinced them, but it took time.”
“Three years of time,” Robert said.
“Papa,” Martin chided.
“You’re home now,” Dottie said. “You’re back with family, where you belong. That’s what matters. I assume you were eventually taken up by the proper channels?”
“Yes,” Alex said. “It was the War Office that finally got me home. I traveled to London, but found that Jo was gone from our flat with no forwarding address. So I found myself a motorcar and came straight here. I didn’t wish to write first, or even to telephone. I thought you might know where Jo could be found, and I couldn’t wait.” He put a hand on mine, where it sat lifeless in my lap.
It was all I could do not to pull away. I made myself sit still, and if he noticed that my hand was cold beneath his warm one, he gave no sign. I stayed silent. In that moment, wild horses could not have dragged the first word from my lips.
It was lies. Alex’s own words confirmed it. The War Office sent me home. I had seen the file only weeks ago; there was no mention of influenza or lost papers. That fact made every word that had just come from my husband’s mouth untrue.