“Speak?” Anna asked.
“At a meeting of the CPGB—sorry, the Communist Party of Great Britain,” said Neil.
“I know what the CPGB is,” said Anna, flicking a bit of ash into the tray Marie kept on the far corner of her desk.
“It’s just a party meeting, not a rally, but I could use the moral support all the same.” Neil grinned down at her. “I’ve been asking Marie to come with me for months, but she always says no.”
“Is that right?” Anna asked, casting her a sly look.
“It isn’t the easiest thing to get away on a Monday night,” Marie protested.
“I think what’s really the matter is that her aunt and uncle disapprove of radical politics,” Neil told Anna.
He was right, but that didn’t make Marie any less annoyed when Anna’s eyes narrowed—a sure sign she was about to do something mortifying.
“I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Müller wouldn’t mind if you were to attend meetings of the Women’s Institute. Such a good Christian organization,” said Anna.
Marie stared at her. “You want me to lie to my aunt and uncle?”
Anna shrugged. “People do it all the time.”
That might be the case, but Marie didn’t. Not to Tante Matilda and Onkel Albrecht. How could she risk their disappointment, when they had done so much for her? They’d given her a home, a family, a life here in London. They’d welcomed her to stay when nothing waited for her back in Germany but empty days and hollow disappointment.
“I couldn’t lie to them,” said Marie.
Neil laughed. “You sound horrified, kleine Maus.”
Little mouse. It was the sort of endearment a man might bestow on his girlfriend—or a parent on a child. But there was something about hearing him say it that made her believe that maybe one day he, Neil Havitt, prodigy of Herr Gunter and one of Royal Imperial University’s bright stars, might see her as something other than the department’s diminutive secretary.
“I’ll go.”
Neil and Anna looked at her. “What will you tell your aunt and uncle?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together, unsure of whether he was teasing her or not. “I will think of something.”
“What about you, Anna?” he asked.
Anna’s glaze flicked between Marie and Neil, and then she blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth. “Another time, maybe. I’m engaged this Monday.”
“Then it will just be Marie watching, and I’ll consider myself a lucky man,” he said with a wink for Marie. He’d strolled off to the office he shared with another graduate student, leaving Anna holding back her laughter.
Faced with her commitment to Neil, Marie had, in fact, told her aunt and uncle the fib about the Women’s Institute. It was so little a lie that it wouldn’t hurt them, she’d rationalized. Tante Matilda had been delighted Marie had decided to join the thoroughly respectable group of do-gooder women, which had made Marie’s stomach clench, but she smiled through the discomfort. On the following Monday evening, she’d met Neil for the bus to Tottenham.
The party meeting had been a crush of people, all greeting each other and chatting. He seemed to know everyone and introduced her around as she hung close to his side until it was time for the speeches.
Neil had spoken fourth out of a lineup of six and had come off the stage wearing a light sheen of sweat on his brow and a triumphant glow.
“How was it?” he asked, dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief.
“You were brilliant,” she said, although in truth his speech had been shorter than she’d expected. She was so used to Neil, the apple of the German Department’s eye, that she’d been a little disappointed when he hadn’t been the main speaker.
But before she could examine that thought any further, he’d leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, pausing long enough to say quietly, “Thank you, kleine Maus.”
She’d let him persuade her to come to the next meeting two weeks later, and then the next. That had been four months ago.
A door creaked open somewhere in the flat as Marie spread butter on a roll. She sat up a little straighter. Then the dining room door swung open and she relaxed again. It was only Henrik.
“Why do you always wake up so early?” her cousin asked in German, squinting in the glare of the overhead lights that lit the room.
“Good morning to you, too,” she said, watching him drop into his chair with a wince. “Do you have a hangover?” She clacked her cup hard on its saucer.
Sure enough, he winced again and rubbed his forehead. “Not so loud.”
Marie rolled her eyes but said, “Here,” and lifted the heavy coffeepot, pulled his cup closer, and poured. “Drink this.”
He gripped his cup so tightly it was a wonder the handle didn’t snap off, and drained it. Then he extended it expectantly. With a sigh, she refilled it.
“Where is Frau Hafner?” Henrik asked, slumping back in his chair.
“Probably in the kitchen, where she usually is at this time of day.”
He waved a hand before him. “And where’s my breakfast? What’s the use of a housekeeper if she doesn’t do her job?”
“Frau Hafner isn’t a mind reader, Henrik. She likely didn’t know that you would be up this early.”
“This is breakfast time, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is for most people.” This was the first time she’d seen Henrik at breakfast in weeks.
As though summoned by his surliness, Frau Hafner pushed through the door, holding a plate in one hand and a pot of jam in another. The housekeeper’s eyes fell on him, and she stopped short. “Herr Henrik, good morning.”
“I want breakfast,” he said.
Frau Hafner’s nod was wooden as she set down the plate in front of Marie. “I will bring you something now.”
“Thank you,” Marie murmured, and the housekeeper laid a gentle hand on her shoulder that seemed to say, He is a burden we all must carry.
Marie turned her attention back to Henrik. He had stolen a slice of toast off of her plate and was crunching on it.
“Are you going to work today?” she asked.
“It’s Monday, isn’t it?” he shot back.
She leaned on the table. “It really is fortunate that you work under your father, Henrik. Who else would tolerate you showing up late on a Monday morning stinking of schnapps?”
“I don’t stink of schnapps,” he said. But then he gave the air a sniff. “I will bathe before I go.”
“What exactly were you doing yesterday evening?”
“I was out with like-minded men,” he muttered.
Drunken fools who like the sound of their own voices is more like it, she thought, but kept her opinion to herself. They’d had this quarrel before, and it wouldn’t be very long until Henrik would snarl and remind her that she was his cousin, not his sister, and therefore a guest in this house no matter how long she’d been living there.
She sighed and pulled the folded newspaper set at her uncle’s place toward her. All she could see of the main headline was “Britain to—”
“Should you be touching that?” he asked.