Always a good idea to dismiss oneself before one could be dismissed, to his way of thinking.
As soon as they entered the house again, Mrs. Blackwell was there to see them off and thank them for coming. She took Zivon’s hand as he stepped back outside through the front door. “You are in my prayers, Mr. Marin.”
He hadn’t words enough to express how much that meant to him. Especially today. So he inclined his head in gratitude and hoped she could read in his eyes how deeply her regard touched him.
If, by some miracle, this all turned out well . . . if ever he earned the captain’s respect again so he could call on Lily properly . . . if ever he dared ask her to be his wife . . . then it would be a blessing to know she came with a mother of such faith.
He was quiet on the walk to the tube station and during the ride he shared with Clarke. He’d long since confessed what the date signified, so his friend didn’t push him for conversation, not until they were off the train again and standing at the corner where they would part ways.
“If you need company tonight, old boy—someone to help you eat some of those blinis—but say the word.”
Zivon smiled. “Thank you. Perhaps later this evening? A few hours of solitude first would not be ill-placed, I think.”
Clarke nodded. “I’ll call around eight. How’s that?”
“Perfect.”
He breathed a sigh of relief when he entered his building and wasn’t immediately swarmed by well-meaning women eager to talk about their daughters. The Smirnovs had done him a service indeed. Surrounded only by quiet, he would perhaps take a bath. Read. Pray. He’d been asking the Lord to help him forgive those who caused him such harm, but it was not a quick process, it seemed.
He turned his key in his lock, let himself in, and froze.
Something was wrong. Out of place.
Many somethings. A strange fragrance lingered in the air—soap, but not his. The tassels on the rug were flipped up, though he was always careful to put them down. The pillow on the chair wasn’t in the right place.
He moved to the doorway of his bedroom, checked the drawer where he stored his petty cash—still there—then walked back out to the living room.
Sunlight from the window lit seams of fire on the photo from Lily. Seams where there shouldn’t have been, in a distinct web pattern. Breath hissing out, he moved closer, until he could see the broken glass, still held in the frame but fractured to the point where the image was distorted behind it.
His gaze dropped to the floor. There was only one other thing he had in his possession that mattered. He couldn’t imagine why anyone else would want it, but even so, he dropped to his knees and pried up the board.
Gone. It was gone. But why? Who could possibly want the picture-less remains of Evgeni’s passport? He sank back on his haunches, board still in his hands. At least he’d taken out the photo of the two of them. It was safe with Lily. That was something. To know that the last existing image of the two of them together hadn’t been taken.
But his hopes for a quiet evening evaporated. It seemed he, too, would have to pay a visit to Admiral Hall.
TUESDAY, 2 JULY 1918
The empty chair at the breakfast table screamed at Lily the moment she stepped inside. Mama was always the first one up, eager to catch the morning light for her work. She was always in here, enjoying a cup of tea and some toast, when Lily came down. Always. She could count on one hand the times she hadn’t been over the years.
Her gaze flew to her father even as her stomach churned. “Daddy? Where’s Mama?”
Daddy looked up from his newspaper, face only a few shades grimmer than usual. “She’s feeling a bit under the weather today. I’m certain it’s nothing to worry over, Lily White.”
No. She told herself to be calm, that not every upset stomach was a symptom of this nasty flu that seemed to be getting more serious instead of ebbing away. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn to the sideboard. “I’ll go and check on her, shall I?”
“Check on who, me? I’m only a minute later than usual.” Ivy, apparently having just come in the room, elbowed Lily playfully aside and grabbed a plate.
She let herself be elbowed. “Mama. Daddy says she isn’t feeling well.”
Ivy’s hands stilled mid-reach for the eggs. Her gaze, a bit wide, turned to tangle with Lily’s. She didn’t have to speak her fears or reiterate that a shocking number of girls at the school were out sick—and that one of them from another class had died. They’d already whispered their worries and their prayers last night.
Lily fastened on a smile. “Eat. I’ll go and see her now.” She fled the room without waiting for a response from her sister, running up the stairs and into her parents’ bedchamber with only a cursory knock on the door.
Nothing could happen to Mama. It couldn’t, not with things still awkward between them. Not with the step forward that the garden party had provided being largely undone by the hours Lily had then spent at the OB in the last week, searching every single archived photograph for those two German faces.
She’d found them. From the early days of the war, some of the first film she’d processed for Hall. They’d not been officers worth noting at the time, just soldiers who must have shown enough promise to get a promotion to something that led to a bigger promotion, and then another. She didn’t much care how they climbed the ranks, only that she hadn’t been imagining their familiarity.
It had taken far longer than the hour she’d expected, though. And since her regular work didn’t exactly halt, and they’d been shorthanded at the hospital too, it had meant hours away from home, where she’d usually have been trying to continue the patching of her relationship with Mama.
Hours when she should have been here. That was so clear now. Why had she pushed her family into second place—no, third? Why hadn’t she focused on Mama and let everything else slip instead?
The lights were out in her parents’ room, but at least the curtains were open, allowing morning sunshine for the lazy pug to nap in. Drawing the curtains was always Mama’s first move upon rising. Any comfort that gave Lily was eclipsed, however, by the sound of retching coming from the en suite bathroom. “Mama?” The connecting door was open, so she rushed through it.
Mama sat on the floor, one arm bracing herself against the toilet, the other waving Lily away. “I’ll be well, Lily. Must have been that old jar of fruit last night. I knew it didn’t smell quite right.” Her voice was hoarse, though Lily had no way of knowing whether it had been so before or was a result of the vomiting.
But she’d called her Lily—not Lilian.
Ignoring the waving hand, Lily knelt by her mother’s side and pressed a hand to her forehead. Warm, but not sizzling hot as some of the men in hospital were. “How is your breathing?”
Mama huffed out a breath that was reassuringly exasperated. “How does it sound? I’m telling you, it’s nothing to be worried about. I’m just going to take it easy this morning, and I’ll be right as rain by afternoon. You go about your day.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Not as quickly as this flu sometimes moved. There were far too many cases of people who weren’t even sick when they left for work in the morning being dead by teatime. It had all the nurses and aides at Charing Cross thoroughly shaken, never knowing with which patients the real danger lay. She fastened on a smile for Mama. “Are you ready to go back to bed, or not yet?”