Walking across the room, she sat on the chair next to Emily’s cot, her hand brushing the cotton of the soft pink sheets, Tigger smiling up at her from the duvet. As Sophie looked around, tears started to well. But this time, instead of going straight to her guilt and pain, Sophie forced herself to dwell on the good memories, allowing them to filter through her darkness. She studied everything in the room. In the corner was Emily’s favourite stuffed toy. A giraffe she had called ‘Gaf’, her childlike way of saying its name. He had gone everywhere with her, except on that last day, and she had slept every night with her tiny fingers caught up in his golden mane, spiralling her hands through the golden tufts to ease herself into sleep. Gaf now sat on the toybox, diligently, as if waiting for his playmate’s return. On the bookshelf over her bed, Emily’s baby books were piled up high, on the top, the creased pages of The Hungry Caterpillar revealed how many times Sophie had read that story to her. In the wardrobe, along with Emily’s other clothes, the favourite pink sweater Alice had knitted for her to grow into, which had sat untouched and unworn for over a year. Sophie sighed.
‘Darling, Emmy,’ she whispered out into the quiet, still room. ‘I’m here to say goodbye.’ Her voice started to crack as the tears began, but she pushed forward. She needed to do this. ‘Not to you, sweetheart, you will always be forever my girl, and there won’t be a day that goes by that you won’t be a part of my heart. But Emily, I have to move on from this pain. And though it breaks my heart, I also know if I don’t take this step, I could be sitting in this nursery for the rest of my life. I know you are in the arms of your grandmother who loves you so much. I know now, my sweet girl, that you didn’t come into my life with all your wonderfulness just to leave me with all this sadness. And I’m going to try, darling. I’m honestly going to try every day to only think about all the fun we had together.
‘Mum, I miss you so much.’ Sophie’s voice started to crack again. ‘So many things have happened that I have wanted to tell you about. And there are so many things I forgot to ask you about because I thought you would be here for so much longer. I love you, Mum. I always will.’
Sophie paused, and then continued, ‘Aunt Vivienne, I thought my job was going to be finding out if your reputation was deserved. But instead, your acts of courage have reached from the past and into my life and restored my hope. I now have a reason every day to fight my way out of the darkness. Because if I don’t, then everything you did, everything my mother and daughter were to me, becomes meaningless. I believe now that I didn’t find you, but that you found me, to remind me of what was truly important. Which is to live the life I have every day, even with the pain. I don’t know when I will see the light again, or how it will feel to be in the presence of that light after all this grief, but at least now I do have a reason to look for it. Because I have a choice to live, when you didn’t. I want to thank you. Thank you for your sacrifice and for showing me so clearly what bravery looks like.’
Sophie’s voice started to fade with the intense emotion as she closed her eyes and imagined all three of them together in the room with her. Her mother so wise and loving, her great-aunt so daring and strong, and her darling daughter, so perfect and joyful – all taken way too soon, but all of them there to encourage her forward.
Wiping away her tears, Sophie opened her eyes, and her heart felt lighter and warmer somehow, and while she was still feeling emboldened by her aunt’s acts of bravery, she reached into a cupboard and pulled out a box, and with tears still streaming freely down her cheeks, she began to pack away Emily’s things.
44
Now that the knowledge of what Vivienne had really done during the war was out in the open, there was one last place she needed to go: back to Cornwall to set the record straight for her uncle Tom.
The morning after their dinner, Sophie called Alex at his hotel and asked if he wanted to join her on her trip. He was delighted, and they travelled together in a hire car so she could drive her own back. On the way she realised, with surprise, she’d never taken Matt down to Cornwall. Even though their holidays often coincided she had never thought to invite him. But somehow, being with Alex, everything felt easy. He seemed to sense that she needed to take it gradually and didn’t force anything. He appeared to simply like being around her and she enjoyed being around him. They talked about art and music and her favourite architecture and what he was considering painting, and she wasn’t sure where this relationship was going but she liked how she felt around him.
Sophie had mentioned to her auntie Jean that she’d be arriving in Cornwall with a friend, but she hadn’t elaborated any more on what she was coming about, so when she arrived in her auntie’s kitchen with Alex, eyebrows were slightly raised.
‘And this is Alex,’ said Sophie, introducing him.
Auntie Jean greeted him suspiciously, clearly remembering how recently Sophie and Matt’s relationship had finally crumbled.
‘Alex and I have been working together on our joint family history.’
Jean stared at them. ‘Are you speaking about Vivienne’s story?’
‘Yes, and his full name is Alex Vonstein. The man she disappeared with… this is his great-nephew.’
Jean stared at him again as though she didn’t trust him. Like she was looking at the ghosts of the past coming forward to haunt the present. She stepped away from him distrustfully, and instinctively turned to put the kettle on.
‘We have new information, Auntie Jean, and I wanted to share it with you.’
Her aunt seemed to need to prepare herself for whatever she was going to hear. ‘Well, let’s wait till your cousin gets home. He’s been out in the fields this afternoon checking on the sheep, but when he gets back, we’ll make a nice dinner. Then you can tell us all about… this news.’
After eating an excellent dinner of lamb and roast potatoes, they settled themselves in the front room. Sophie started at the beginning of the story, informing them about the work that Vivienne had done for SOE. She showed them the war records she’d gathered. Her auntie Jean just looked at it in dismay and shook her head, struggling to take everything in.
Alex then continued the story, informing them that his great-uncle had also been working for SOE.
‘He was a Nazi,’ stated Jean, briskly.
‘He was deep undercover. He’d been back here receiving a briefing about the undercover work he would be doing for the D-Day landings, and his plane went down on the way back to France. We believe he was under a strict mandate to not break his cover for anyone, and it appeared only one person in SOE knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, the operative who knew about his case was killed. What we’ve deduced is that he must have told Vivienne of his plan because he needed her help. She’d made her way to London to find his SOE handler, but when she realised that he was dead, she felt she couldn’t divulge the secret to anyone else. The photographer took this picture, the one that was in the war museum, as Vivienne was leaving that meeting. We have records of her being in the building under her code name, Sparrow.’
‘Her code name was Sparrow?’ Jean asked.
‘Yes, that was the name she worked under in SOE’