Jonathan teased out the breath he was holding. ‘Thank goodness,’ he spluttered. Glancing over her shoulder, he noticed the arrival of the mayor’s party and rushed off to greet them.
The event started on time and Jonathan delivered his speech perfectly, reading it from Sophie’s phone. In it he gave the crowd a flavour of London during the 1940s, and described to them how the photos had been found when the charity had been moving an ancient desk to be sold at Sotheby’s. The negatives of the photographs now being displayed in the museum had been in an envelope with the date March 1944 scribbled on the front. They had somehow slid down behind a drawer and wedged themselves at the back of the desk.
Sophie listened to Jonathan and wondered what it would have been like to be alive during that time and how brave people had to have been. Sophie didn’t feel brave. She didn’t think she would have been able to survive through all that trauma.
What a miracle it had been that the negatives had not only been found but had been in such good condition after so many decades. Once it was obvious the photos could be saved, Sophie’s job had been to research the history of them. Relying on her legal background of piecing together evidence, she had established that during wartime, the photographer Karen Johnson had been a family friend of the lord of Hawthorne Manor, the latest home Jonathan and Sophie had been working on. In the 1940s, a London newspaper had commissioned Karen to take pictures of the ever-changing city and to capture the tenacious spirit of the people of the capital, determined to rebuild at any cost, especially from the damage done from the relentless bombing campaign of the Blitz in 1940–41, when London had been bombed for fifty-six out of fifty-seven days. Although many photos of the devastation of London had been taken during the war, Sophie knew these would be something special – captured as they were through the lens of one of the most prominent photographers of that period.
Karen Johnson’s untimely death in March 1944 caused Sophie to speculate that she had been staying at the manor with her friends at the time and the envelope had been with her belongings, then somehow, in the grief of her death, been misplaced.
After Jonathan’s flawless speech, much to Sophie’s relief, she then accompanied the group of World War Two enthusiasts as they toured the gallery, listening to him talk about the significance of each piece and how the reconstruction of London had been so intensive.
Congratulating their charity on the work that had not only uncovered the photographs, but also the treasure trove of World War Two artefacts on display, the mayor left just as Jonathan’s partner, Grant, arrived, and Sophie knew he would be able to take over babysitting her boss so she could grab a glass of champagne and relax a little.
Deciding to excuse herself from the group, just as Grant and Jonathan started enthusing about their new puppy, Sophie started to look around the gallery on her own. As she studied each photo in more detail, her thoughts returned to her relationship with Matt. It wasn’t just that he was busy, or even that it felt like they’d hardly seen each other in the last few months. Something was nagging at her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that was more than just their mutual grief.
Sophie sipped her champagne as she scanned the photograph of the bombing of the Woolworth Building in 1942 and its reconstruction. It had been taken by Karen earlier than the rest of the collection, but borrowed to add more content. Sophie tried to imagine what it’d be like to be part of such a horror, and to come back to work the next day and find you no longer had a job or a place of work. She drifted to the next print. A group of women were bent over wearing headscarves and trousers, smiling with that British ‘can do’ attitude as they removed rubble from what would’ve been somebody’s home. The next picture was of the Baker Street bombing. It revealed the randomness of the bombing patterns. In the photo, two buildings stand, almost unscathed, either side of an empty space where another has been completely demolished. On the pile of rubble sat a young boy who was the focus of the photograph. He was dirty-faced, in a grey school uniform and sweater, holding a tattered Union Jack.
As Sophie studied the image, something caught her eye, someone a little out of focus and off to the side she hadn’t noticed the first time she’d seen the photograph, when it was so much smaller. She drew closer and realised that what had caught her attention for a second had been a thought that a woman she could see in the photo was her mother. All at once, the weight of grief slammed into her again, starting in the pit of her stomach, searing up her body until it culminated in her throat, coming out as a strangled gasp.
Sophie hated how her loss and pain did this to her every time. She knew she would feel gutted, utterly devastated, after the tragedy, but she hadn’t been prepared for the waves of sorrow that could appear for months afterwards and literally threaten to take her legs from under her. As Sophie stared at the picture, she shook the thought from her mind, recognising how ridiculous it had been. The woman in this picture couldn’t possibly be her mother. This photograph had been taken during the war, more than a decade before her mother was even born. It was just one of those odd phenomena that happen when someone dies and in your desperation to claw them back from death you project them everywhere. Someone with the same haircut across the room makes your heart skip a beat, or a person crossing the street with the same stride stops you in your tracks and, for one tiny moment, your heart leaps with the connection. For that one sliver of a second you think there’s been a mistake and that the person you miss more than life itself is still alive. Then the cruel pain and weight of your mistake brings back the anguish in such a staggering way it threatens to engulf you and it is as if it all just happened yesterday.
Catching her breath, Sophie drew closer to the picture. It wasn’t just projection. It was uncanny. The woman’s stance, height and trim figure, with the elegant swan neck, was so familiar to her. Her head was turned to the side so that Sophie couldn’t see her face, just her head in profile, but this person could, very easily, be a member of her family.
Then something else struck her. The woman was wearing a tight A-line skirt and a jumper that Sophie could see under her unbuttoned coat, and on the lapel of the jacket was a piece of jewellery that also felt familiar to her. It looked a lot like her family crest. Sophie had always thought the brooch an ugly thing, with a stag’s head and gangly antlers. But it was very distinguishable and this was a very similar, if not the same, piece she had seen many times on her great-grandmother’s lapel in photographs.
Sophie looked at the woman again, the way her chin was cocked to one side, just as her mother would do when she would ask a question. Was it possible it could be her great-aunt Caroline? Sophie took stock of the Hamilton females. On her grandfather’s side, there had been three children alive during the war. Her great-uncle Tom, her great-aunt Caroline and her grandfather, John. The boys had been young but Auntie Caroline had been in her mid-twenties during the war, so this could be her. Sophie’s grandmother and John’s wife, Bessy, would know for sure. Maybe she should call her and ask. How excited would she be to know there was a photograph of her late sister-in-law in the museum?
All at once, someone grabbed Sophie from behind and she jumped, so lost in her thoughts. She spun around, and Matt was in front of her, grinning. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many exhibitions I’ve been in,’ he spluttered, out of breath. ‘So sorry I’m late, Soph. Did I miss anything exciting? Did Jonathan make it through the speech without you holding his hand?’