Sophie kept it light, even though she desperately wanted to know what was really going on between them. She was finding it hard to understand how, after they had been through so much together, they appeared to have quickly drifted apart. She weighed everything she said now.
Hey there, great to see you at the gallery today. Sorry you’ve been so busy. I am considering going to Cornwall for a short break. If I decide to, let’s try to get together when I get back. Love you.
She studied the message before she sent it and acknowledged that she hesitated. Recently, even asking to get together with him had made her feel as if she were asking too much. Sophie decided to send the message just as it was, and not second-guess herself. Pressing send, she watched it go and noted that it indicated that he’d read it, but he didn’t respond. She felt her stomach tighten again with this further rejection. She wasn’t mistaken to be feeling his distance; that just confirmed it.
Making her way to her bed, she passed Emily’s room and, without turning on the light, pushed open the door and whispered into the darkness, ‘Goodnight, sweet girl.’ It was a ritual Sophie did every night and if she didn’t put on the light and see the raw emptiness of the room and the bed, for just a moment, just one small moment, she could pretend her darling girl was still with them, curled up deep in sleep.
Climbing into her own bed, William, her intensely affectionate cat, crawled under the covers next to her from the warm bed he’d made for himself on a chair under the table. Cuddling up close to her, his loud purr comforted Sophie as she fell asleep wondering about her mysterious great-aunt Vivienne and what Bessy had told her about Vivienne going to France at the beginning of the war. Had it been on war work?
4
Spring 1943
Vivienne Hamilton, Vivi to all her friends, played nervously with the catch of the heavy brown suitcase, inside which was hidden the standard-issue B2 wireless, and contemplated the task ahead of her assigned by the British Spy Organisation. When SOE had briefed her before leaving, they’d made everything sound like a matter of routine. However, now that she was on a fishing boat in the middle of the night after many hours of travel heading towards the Brittany coast of northern France, she suddenly felt apprehensive.
The captain of the small vessel, Mr John Thompson, whom Vivi had known since childhood, must have sensed his passenger’s nervousness, because he came to check on her as she sat bundled up below deck.
‘We will be there in the next hour,’ he stated, looking at her with concern. Then he added as he tapped her hand in a fatherly way, ‘Your mother would be proud, Vivienne, if she were still alive.’
Vivi nodded, grateful to soon be off the water, but her stomach churned with fear as she readjusted her skirt. The French clothes she had to wear felt unfamiliar to her and were undeniably of a style she would not customarily choose. Staring at herself in the mirror before she’d left home that evening had made her realise that she was really going to do this.
It had all seemed more of a lark when she’d started. A friend had dared her to do it when they had seen the advertisement in the paper, and she was always up for a little adventure. Having escaped from a finishing school that her father had wanted her to attend, Vivi had been hiding out in London with a group of friends where they had been enjoying as much alcohol as they could manage before Hitler came to town and seized it all. When one of them had seen the advertisement in the newspaper appealing for individuals who had knowledge of France, Vivi had been very interested. Her funds had been running low and unlike a prodigal daughter, knowing she wouldn’t be received with open arms back home, she had found the advert enticing. Maybe it was a courier job, something entertaining, something that would offer her lots of money and a little excitement.
When she had got to the office to apply it hadn’t been what she had expected – it’d felt more like it might be some dry civil-service affair. But when Vivi had told the secretary that she spoke fluent German and French, the woman’s eyebrows had risen slightly above her reading glasses. Vivi had gone on to add all the places she’d travelled, which had been considerable before the war. She didn’t add how many hearts she had broken, just the fact she had lived in France for a while as a travel companion for her mother. At that time her brothers were away at school and her sister Caroline helped her father run the estate, as she got ready to move to Canada with her new fiancé. Her mother, a bohemian at heart, had loved her father dearly but not the drudgery of running the estate, so had escaped frequently to enjoy the European lifestyle with her daughter before the war and before she had become ill and had succumbed to cancer the year before.
All at once, the boat Vivi was travelling in hit a considerably large wave, and an arc of cold foamy spray reached right down into the cabin, covering her shoes and soaking her stockings, reminding her she was on her way to work for the British underground in France. Because that had been the real reason for the notice in the newspaper. It was a recruiting campaign that vetted individuals who could be advantageous to the Allies’ undercover military operations in Europe.
With not much else on her horizon and with the exciting talk of learning how to parachute and handle live ammunition, Vivi had been willing to give it a shot, if for nothing else than to have a great after-dinner story to regale her friends with on returning. But there had been no glamour when she’d got there, the basic training had been extremely demanding, with SOE – a branch of the secret service – putting her through many rigorous tests of endurance and physical training to see if she would break under pressure. It had been her sheer obstinance and stubbornness that had kept her in the game, and every time they lost another recruit who buckled under the strain, Vivi had set her sights on the prize, determined not to fail. They had put her through her paces for months, first in the south of England and later in the north of Scotland, where she’d been trained in every kind of necessary skill, from how to operate her wireless to how to perform hand-to-hand combat. But nothing could prepare her for the tremendous fear Vivi felt right now. She swallowed it down. She could do this.
As the little fishing boat bobbed towards the sunrise and the land she could now see coming into view, Mr Thompson eyed her again with concern. Vivi remembered with fondness him selling fish right out of his boat on the beach when she was a child.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ He offered her tea from a canteen he had above deck.
She eyed it distrustfully. ‘Do you have anything stronger?’ she enquired, quirking her eyebrow.
He chuckled and offered her a swig of a flask he had in a breast pocket. ‘You’ll do well, Vivienne,’ he stated with assurance. ‘You always were bold as brass. I can remember chasing you away from my boat more than once when you tried to steal my fish.’
Vivi enjoyed the memory. She’d completely forgotten about the days when her older sister Caroline would dare her to do such things.
‘I got away with one once,’ she reminded him, with a smirk. ‘This is a little different than stealing fish,’ she added, passing him back his flask.
‘Ah, but there’s that brave streak that’s inside you, Vivi. Not everybody has it, and you’ll find it when you most need it.’