Ellie took a deep breath, ready to collapse. Her ankles were swollen, her stomach was huge and she was starting to breathe heavier than usual. They were all signs she needed to slow down, despite the fact that she was doing her best to ignore them.
‘I wish Lucy had written back. I would have liked to see her again before I go. But I can’t exactly trot off to see her at nine months pregnant!’
‘What of your other friend? Scarlet?’
She nodded. ‘I’d hoped to see her, too. In fact, she’s said she will try to call on me tomorrow if she can. I don’t know where she’s been, but she mentioned in her letter coming back from somewhere and needing to see me.’
‘Well, you tell your friends they’re welcome here whenever they want to call. I can’t think of anything nicer than having my home filled with visitors and happy chatter.’
Ellie looked back at her scones and decided to wrap them in a tea towel to keep them warm for tea before finally sitting down. She was desperately doing her best to knit for the baby, even though she’d never been talented when it came to homely tasks.
Lily had gone and Ellie had only settled for a moment when there was a knock at the door. She set down her knitting needles, hoping for a moment that it could be Spencer, heart racing as she wondered if he might have come to surprise them. But she quickly pushed those thoughts away. Surely Spencer would have walked straight through the door without knocking.
‘I’ll get it,’ Ellie called out, not sure where Lily had disappeared to.
She walked to the door, waddling now, which infuriated her. There was a knock again and she wondered who would be so impatient.
‘Scarlet!’ She gasped her friend’s name when she opened the door, letting the handle go and opening her arms.
‘Oh, Ellie, look at you!’ Scarlet hugged her tight, their stomachs pressed together to allow them to do so.
‘Larger than last time you saw me,’ she joked, before noticing how drained Scarlet looked. Her friend’s cheeks were ghostly white, like chalk, and her eyes were hollow, her face thin. She didn’t resemble the Scarlet that she’d known for all those months, even when they’d both been at their thinnest on their substandard daily rations. ‘Scarlet, what’s happened? You don’t look like yourself.’
Scarlet’s face crumpled as she lost her composure, but she quickly righted herself, reaching for Ellie’s hand and holding tight to it. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’ Ellie closed the door and led Scarlet through the house to the kitchen, still holding her hand. ‘How about we have a cup of tea? I’ve made scones so we can have jam with them. It’s a little tart as we made it from our strawberries without a lot of sugar, but it’s still nice.’
Scarlet had sat down at the table and Ellie kept glancing at her as she boiled water, made tea and prepared the scones. Scarlet was rubbing her thumb over a ball of wool that had been left on the table.
‘This is a beautiful home,’ Scarlet said.
‘It is,’ Ellie agreed. ‘I wish we’d been able to see more of each other, but with so much going on for you with Thomas and your nursing, and me with this huge stomach . . .’ Ellie laughed to herself. ‘Now the war is over we’ll have no excuse but to have regular get-togethers. How is Thomas getting along?’
Scarlet stared down into her tea when Ellie set it in front of her. ‘Thomas is dead,’ she said quietly.
‘Dead?’ Ellie dropped into the seat beside Scarlet. ‘Dead?’
Scarlet nodded, brushing tears from her cheek with the back of her fingers then picking up her cup and wrapping her hands around it. ‘We buried him only five days ago. I’m officially a widow.’
‘But, what . . . ?’ Ellie didn’t know what to say, whether it was even proper for her to ask what had happened. But Scarlet was her friend, and she’d obviously come here to talk. ‘Tell me everything, Scarlet. What happened to him?’
Her friend met her gaze and even her eyes seemed paler than usual. ‘Thomas was unbearable, there’s no reason to pretend otherwise simply because he’s dead. He couldn’t live with himself, not being able to walk and stuck in that wheelchair with no answer about why his legs wouldn’t work. He hurt me over and over again, so I left and he . . .’ She swallowed. ‘He took his own life.’
Ellie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘He didn’t!’
‘Shot himself, sitting there in his chair in the front room of our house.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ellie whispered, reaching for Scarlet’s hand again.
‘I’d left him,’ Scarlet said. ‘I’d left him for James and he didn’t even know.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Ellie told her.
‘Isn’t it? James keeps telling me the same thing.’
They sat there, sipping their tea, quiet for a long while.
‘You fell in love with James when no one else believed Thomas had a chance of being alive, and yet you turned your back on your heart and followed through with the promise you’d made. If he couldn’t see how lucky he was to have you, or he couldn’t live with his demons from the war, then that was his burden, not yours.’
‘You honestly believe that?’ Scarlet asked, chewing on her bottom lip the moment she stopped talking.
‘Yes, yes I do,’ Ellie insisted. ‘I’ve never met a person as loyal and loving as you.’
Her stomach twinged, but she ignored it. She’d been getting small contractions for days and, as unsettling as it was, she wanted to give Scarlet her full attention.
‘I needed to tell someone, someone other than James. He keeps telling me not to blame myself, he wants me back with him, but I can’t pretend I’m staying with a friend any longer.’ She sighed. ‘He is mourning his brother, the brother he remembers from their younger years, and I’m mourning the husband I wished I’d had, but it doesn’t change the way we feel about each other.’
‘So don’t let it,’ Ellie said, grimacing as a stronger pain squeezed through her stomach. ‘Stay put, let yourself be the grieving widow for a time, and then let his family and everyone else see you slowly fall in love with his brother when you’re ready. No one but you, Lucy, James and me has to know the truth. And if you need time away from him, he’ll understand that. Heck, he’s already waited all this time, what’s a few more months?’
A light came back into Scarlet’s eyes as she looked up, her shoulders rising, and what she could only presume was hope filling her friend’s gaze.
‘You honestly believe all that? Everything you just said?’
Ellie smiled, but it was cut short by another tightening. ‘Yes. His family would probably be overjoyed at another marriage, so long as it all looked proper, and no one would ever guess the truth. But before that you need time to grieve. You both do.’
Scarlet went to say something else but Ellie flapped her hand at her, trying not to moan.
‘I think I’m going to need some help here,’ she confessed, starting to think that the contractions were no longer false ones. ‘I have a feeling this baby has made up his mind that today is the day – and it’s not a day too soon for my liking.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lucy