She shook her head. ‘No. I love him more than ever. Pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘Of course not. But, dear, it doesn’t sound like you’ve any real reason to suspect anything.’ She looked at her sister sharply. ‘Or have you? It was strange perfume on his collar that gave Steve away last time.’
‘A few weeks ago, when the weather was getting colder, David asked me to take his winter coat to the cleaners. I emptied out the pockets, like I usually do – he leaves handkerchiefs in there sometimes. I found a used ticket, for one of those lunchtime concerts they give in churches round Whitehall. There was a name on the back – her name, Carol Bennett. She must have reserved them.’
‘Maybe a whole group of them went. Did you ask him about it?’
‘No.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m a coward,’ she added quietly.
‘You’ve never been a coward,’ Irene answered emphatically. ‘Was it a Saturday concert?’
‘No. It was during the week.’ Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Then last Thursday evening, when David was supposed to be playing tennis, I rang the club to speak to him, just to check if he was there. Spying on him, I suppose. Well, he wasn’t.’
‘Oh, darling,’ Irene said. ‘What are you going to do? Confront him?’
‘Perhaps I should, but you see . . .’ Sarah picked at the uneaten biscuit on her plate. ‘I’m frightened that if I’m right it could be the end of us. And if I’m wrong, confronting him could drive us further apart than ever. So you see, I am a coward.’ She frowned. ‘But there’s only so much I’ll take. It goes round and round in my head, being stuck alone in that bloody house all day.’
‘Have you thought any more about going back to teaching?’
‘They won’t take married women.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Well, at least I’ve got my charity work. The Christmas toys for children of the unemployed committee starts meeting next week. That’ll get me out of the house. But it won’t stop me worrying.’
‘Darling, you can’t just let suspicion eat away at you. Believe me, that’s what it does.’
‘I’m keeping track of him. I will say something, but I have to be sure.’ She looked at her sister in appeal. ‘I could be risking everything.’
It was dark when they left the Corner House, a slight fog in the air. Wet tram rails glittered in the streetlights. They embraced and parted. Sarah walked to the tube station; if the trains were running normally she should have dinner cooked by the time David came home at seven thirty. The streets were getting crowded, everyone wrapped up in coats, men in bowlers and caps and Homburgs, women in headscarves or the large saucer-shaped hats with feathers that were fashionable this year. Outside the entrance to Leicester Square tube station some workmen were scrubbing at a whitewashed letter ‘V’, one of the Resistance symbols. V for victory. Someone must have painted it there secretly during the night.
When Sarah arrived home the house was cold. She stood in the little hall, with its coat stand and the big table where the telephone sat, next to a large, colourful Regency vase that had belonged to David’s mother. They had had to lock it away for safety when Charlie started toddling.
When she was growing up between the wars Sarah had thought of herself as an independent woman, a teacher. Before she met David she had begun to worry, at twenty-three, whether she might turn into a spinster, not because men didn’t find her attractive, but because she found so many of them dull. She had wondered, during the 1939–40 war, whether women would become more independent, with their husbands away, but everything had gone back to normal afterwards, and government policy now was for wives to stay at home, keep what jobs there were for the men.
Irene was the beauty in the family but Sarah was pretty too, with blue eyes and a straight little nose, and her square chin gave her face a strong look. She had never been in love before she met David at the tennis-club dance in 1942. He had swept her off her feet, as they said in the romantic novels. A year later she was married and then she had gone with him on his two-year posting to New Zealand. When she returned she found she was pregnant with Charlie. She missed her work sometimes but she loved their baby, already looked forward to others following on.
Charlie was a bright, excitable, cheerful boy, quick to walk and learn. He had Sarah’s blonde hair and her features, but occasionally his expression would turn serious and solemn, in a way that reminded her of a look she caught on her husband’s face sometimes; though with his son David was playful, childlike in a way that clutched at her heart. He would come home as early as possible from work and they would hold hands watching Charlie play on the floor beside them.
The stairs in the house were quite steep, and they had put child gates at the top and bottom, though they made the active little boy howl, resenting the restriction on his freedom. One day when he was nearly three Sarah had gone into the bedroom to put on some make-up before going to the shops. She had taken Charlie upstairs with her, closing the latch on the gate behind them. Outside it had been snowing – the tree in their little front garden and the privet hedge were thickly dusted with white – and Charlie was desperate to get out in it. He had gone out into the upstairs hall and called back, ‘Mummy, Mummy, want to see the snow!’
‘In a minute. Be patient, sweetheart!’
Then there came a series of little bumps and tiny cries and a thud, followed by a silence so sudden and complete she could hear the blood thumping in her ears. She had sat rigid for a second, then called, ‘Charlie!’ and ran into the hall. The gate at the top was still closed, but when she looked down Charlie was lying at the bottom of the stairs, limbs spreadeagled. She and David had said only a couple of days before that he was getting big and they would have to watch he didn’t climb over.
Sarah ran downstairs, hoping against hope, but before she reached the bottom she could see from the complete stillness of Charlie’s eyes and the angle of his head that he was dead, his neck broken. She lifted his little body and held it. It was still warm and she carried on hugging it, with a wild, mad feeling that if she held him to her own warm body, so long as he did not grow cold, somehow he might come back to life. Later, after she had at last telephoned 999, after David had been sent home from the office, she had told him why she had held him for so long, and David had understood.
Sarah shook herself, took off her coat, and switched on the central heating. She lit the coal fire, then went into the kitchen and turned on the radio, cheerful dance music on the Light Programme breaking the silence. She began to prepare dinner. Despite what she had said to Irene, she knew she couldn’t face it, she couldn’t confront David yet.
Chapter Four
DAVID HAD ALSO TRAVELLED INTO London that Sunday afternoon, the key and the camera taken out of their locked drawer and slipped into his inside jacket pocket next to his ID card. Two years as a spy had strengthened him, hardened him, even though, tangled in all the lies, part of him felt totally at sea.
There were not many others travelling, a few shift workers and people going in to meet friends. David wore a sports jacket and flannel trousers under his coat; if staff came in to work at the Office at the weekend they were allowed to dress informally.
Opposite him a woman sat reading The Times. It had been bought by Beaverbrook to add to his newspaper empire just before he took the premiership; he owned almost half the country’s newspapers now, and Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail stable had swallowed up a large chunk of the rest. ‘What Now for America?’ a headline asked, above a picture of the newly elected Adlai Stevenson, his face serious and scholarly. ‘For twelve years, America has minded its own business under Republican presidents. Will Stevenson, like Roosevelt, be tempted to naive interference in European affairs?’ They’ll be worried, David thought with satisfaction. Nothing was going right for them now. Another article speculated that the Queen’s Coronation next year might be in some way combined with celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of Herr Hitler’s accession to power in Germany, where huge celebrations were planned, greater even than the Italian festivities earlier in the year to mark Mussolini’s thirty years in power.