‘What are you working on at the moment? No peeping, I hope,’ her mother prodded, not taking the bait.
‘A rather clear-cut case in fact,’ Billie replied. ‘Not at all unsavoury. A mother hired me to track down her missing son.’
‘There must be a lot of those at the moment.’
‘Indeed, but not like this. He’s not MIA.’ Billie thought of Jack again and quickly pushed the thought away. This was getting to be a quite unhelpful habit, thinking of him when her mind should be on her work. ‘This one was too young to serve,’ Billie added by way of explanation.
‘Dear goddess, tell me it’s not like the Lindbergh baby!’ Ella exclaimed.
‘No. More like a teenage runaway. He’s seventeen. Hopefully the boy hasn’t got himself hurt somewhere.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t know what to do with one of those, anyway.’
Babies. Billie groaned softly into her glass. ‘As I recall, you had Alma to help you out with me,’ Billie said loudly enough to include everyone in the flat. From the corner of her eye she spotted Alma’s sly grin in the doorway of the kitchen. Her mother liked to rib Billie about her domestic circumstances, or lack thereof, but Billie knew that Ella had hardly embraced the domestic life herself, and it was no accident she’d had but one child. The baroness knew about Marie Stopes and her family-planning devices and firmly believed in women controlling the fate of their wombs, despite what grey-haired men of religion had to say on the matter.
Billie rose and moved to the window, the red gown holding to her firm curves like liquid.
‘That’s a lovely dress,’ her mother said, and Billie thanked her. She had to admit it fitted better now that she was not as thin. Europe had taken the weight off her, and many others besides. The only people who got fat on wars were the ones who weren’t really there – weren’t on the front lines or in the factories, or starving at home, but were pushing pawns around as on a chessboard, far from the action.
‘It’s for The Dancers,’ Billie explained of her attire.
‘Ahh,’ Ella responded, understanding.
Billie looked around her, glass in hand. The baroness had a sweeping view over Edgecliff, Double Bay shimmering in the distance, in what was year by year becoming a rather too sparsely furnished apartment. What was still in place was impressive and in impeccable taste, but the pieces were gradually receding, like a glacier. There was a large space where a Steinway baby grand piano had recently stood, Billie noticed. Not that anyone had played it much since they’d sold the stately house in Potts Point and moved to Cliffside Flats. She took another sip of the sherry. If only things were going a bit better at the agency, she’d be able to support her mother as well as herself. Perhaps in time, she thought.
Her mother was giving her a look. ‘Where is your mind tonight? You look like you are somewhere else.’
‘I’m fine.’
Ella wasn’t going to let it go. ‘It pains me to see you single like this, Billie my girl. Men throw themselves at you. Surely you see that? Why don’t you take one of them up on it?’
Billie put the sherry down, folded her arms and pulled her brows together. She didn’t like this conversation. She had a puzzle to solve and it wasn’t this one.
Ella raised her eyebrows. ‘All I’m saying is take advantage of it, Billie. Enjoy yourself. You only live once and there are plenty of nice young men out there. They certainly notice you.’
Jack was back at the forefront of Billie’s mind now: that smile, that soft mouth, those warm, strong hands. Billie, wait for me. I want you. I want to be yours. She hungered for him, for that deep, reassuring voice, that physical chemistry, that touch her body recalled so achingly, so devastatingly well.
Her mother seemed to read her thoughts. ‘Darling, he’s not coming back,’ she said, as gently as she could. But, of course, there was no way to say it gently. ‘He may have been a good man, but he’s gone.’
Billie’s whole body erupted in gooseflesh, a feeling of sickness sweeping over her, mingled with unbearable longing. She’d long suspected that Jack and his Argus camera had taken on one too many assignments. If she was truly ‘brave’, as he’d often said she was, then he was a step beyond, positively reckless in his pursuit of the Nazis and their war crimes. The two of them had played a small part in turning the tide, but a part nonetheless: Billie’s words and his photographs helping to tell a story to the world of cruelty against civilians, against children, in what had been a bold attempt at absolute and total genocide. Together they’d been part of something larger than themselves, Billie and Jack. His last assignment that she knew of had been in Warsaw in ’44, when the Polish Home Army, an underground resistance group, had risen against the German occupation forces. It had been risky for a press photographer by then, far riskier than it had been in 1938. He’d sent one letter from Warsaw – and then nothing. Word had come on the wireless that the rebellion had been crushed, the Soviet forces having failed to help. The centre of the city had been razed in October of that year, with over one hundred thousand killed. And no word from Jack. Nothing. The British paper he’d worked for had no information on his whereabouts.
He’d vanished only months after he and Billie had married, following a wartime affair of several years, broken up into romantic interludes and stolen weekends of intense intimacy. Then Jack was gone. And Billie had left Paris to return to Australia and her ailing father, arriving too late. In no time at all she had lost not one but the two most important men in her life. It had been more than two years now since she’d seen Jack, she reminded herself again, but time moved strangely after the war.
Billie looked down at the luxurious fabric of her evening gown, finding it surreal against her thoughts of the war. Everything had changed when the war began, and now it was so different again. So little was the same; her whole life before was almost like a dream. Sometimes it were as if she watched her world through the lens of Jack’s Argus, distant and somehow disconnected, everything in monochrome.
‘Darling, being a spinster suits some, but not you. I know you yearn for something else,’ her mother was saying.
‘I made a vow to Jack,’ Billie managed, in a tight voice. Her mouth felt as dry as the outback. Their vows had to do with each other, but also their common cause. They would do whatever they had to in order to bring the truth of what was happening to the world, and especially to America where isolationist public sentiment had finally turned, changing the course of the war. Hitler had wanted more than Poland and Austria, more than all of Europe. He had wanted the world reflected in his terrifying image. He had come closer than many cared to admit.
‘You may well have done, my girl,’ Billie’s mother said, bringing her back to the moment. ‘You may well have made a vow to that man, but that was the war. Things are different now. The war is over and you have no ring, no papers and no husband. There were two witnesses and you haven’t seen them since. Such things happened in the Great War too. No one would begrudge you moving on. He wouldn’t.’
‘You never met him,’ Billie said softly. It wasn’t much of an argument, but it was true. They would have got on, she thought. Both were free spirits in their own ways. Complicated. Stubborn. Exciting.