Her face reddened, and Ethel found she couldn’t look at him. Of course he wasn’t clergy. She’d known that merely from looking at his shoes. “It’s that way,” she said hurriedly, averting her eyes and pointing in the right direction. “You’ll see the back of the new church, and you’ll know you’re there.”
Tucking the handbag under her coat, she stepped out into the rain and began to run, impervious to the wet, wanting only to put the man and her humiliation behind her. To escape from the certainty that her mother had been right about the impossibility of her ever amounting to anything outside the life into which she’d been born.
“I don’t know your name to thank you properly,” he called out after her.
Ethel hesitated, then stopped. He wanted to know her name. She couldn’t tell him, of course. Not the name that belonged in a washerwoman’s cottage. She would never see him again, but she wanted to leave him with the memory of someone with a name that would be at home in the circles he undoubtedly moved in.
She turned. “It’s Eva.”
“Eva,” he said, the single word a thing of beauty on his lips. “Where can I find you again, Eva?” He took a step toward her.
She pretended she hadn’t heard and resumed running, not stopping until she was inside the flat, dripping water all over the parquet floor their landlady took so much pride in. She glanced in the corner to see Precious sleeping, turned on her side with her back to the door. It was only then that Ethel realized she had the man’s handkerchief still wrapped around the handbag. Peeling back the corner, she saw an embroidered GBS stitched in dark blue.
“Ethel? Is that you?” Precious mumbled without turning around.
“No.” She bit her lip, feeling foolish and excited all at once.
Precious turned slightly to get a better look at her and blinked, confused.
“It’s me—but I want to be called Eva now. It’s much more high-class sounding than Ethel, don’t you think?”
Sitting up, Precious smiled, her eyes brightening. “It is. I picture a whole different person when I hear ‘Eva.’ Like a Hollywood star. Eva can be your nickname—like Precious is for me. It can be something else we share. Except Eva is more special since you’re giving it to yourself.”
“You think so?”
Precious nodded enthusiastically. “Absolutely. You’re reinventing yourself, so you might as well have a new name.” She sniffled into her tissue, her eyes turning serious. “But won’t your parents mind? Ethel is the name they gave you.”
Ethel had told her friend very little about her background, only that she’d lived in northern England with her mother, who supported them both by taking in laundry from the big houses and working as a seamstress for the well-to-do. She’d confided in Precious that she sent her mother money from every paycheck, but she hadn’t admitted that she never included a letter, because her mother couldn’t read or write.
Nor had she mentioned her father or his meaty fists, or how he’d been sent to jail for beating a man almost to death in a bar brawl after the man had accused him of cheating at cards. She’d never told Precious about her mother’s smashed face and broken fingers, or how they had moved several times just in case her father ever got out of jail and took it upon himself to find them.
Ethel knew that Precious would understand, would probably hug her to show that she did. Ethel didn’t tell her friend because the shame she felt was a hot, living thing that smoldered in her core. In her new life as a model in London, she’d gotten in the habit of ignoring it, the equivalent of placing a small lid over a raging stove fire. It was still there, but as long as she didn’t look at it, she could live her life as if Ethel Maltby had never existed at all.
“No. I don’t think they’ll mind,” she said, unpinning her soaking hat. “I’ll go put the kettle on and then see about making you chicken soup.” She took off her coat, almost dropping the purse tucked inside. Ethel lifted the man’s handkerchief to her nose, the faint scent of sandalwood making her think of freckles and a deep chin cleft. Of eyes that laughed and were the color of the dales surrounding her home.
“I met a gentleman on the high street.” When her friend didn’t respond, Ethel turned toward the bed, not surprised to discover Precious had fallen asleep again, her face pressed into the pillow.
Ethel folded the handkerchief carefully and placed it inside her dresser, making sure it was tucked on top, where she’d see it each time she opened her drawer. It would be her talisman to remember the day Ethel Maltby had reinvented herself as an enigmatic woman named Eva. And the man who’d asked for her name and made her believe that her mother might have been wrong, that her world was full of possibilities that she hadn’t yet begun to imagine.
CHAPTER 4
LONDON
MAY 2019
I stood by the phone in the small alcove in the front foyer, glittering gems of sunlight filtering through the leaded glass casement windows and dotting the walls and floor, making me think of ghosts. Grief is like a ghost. I imagined years of ghosts trapped in each dust mote and shard of light in the old flat, waiting to be set free. I stared at a gray leaf frozen in the glass of the window, my thoughts making me pause, giving me a new perspective on my assignment.
I was supposed to interview a ninety-nine-year-old former model and write an article about how contemporary fashion had been influenced by the Second World War. The idea had seemed very accessible, and I’d had the time available, so I’d agreed. Arabella planned to run my piece in the magazine in conjunction with an exhibition of 1940s fashion at the Design Museum, many of the clothes provided by Precious. It had all seemed very standard.
Then I’d met Precious Dubose, and I’d realized that the assignment wasn’t as clear-cut as I’d assumed.
Grief is like a ghost. Maybe Precious Dubose had been waiting all these years to set some of hers free.
I yawned, feeling completely exhausted. I hadn’t been able to sleep past five o’clock—midnight New York time—and not just because of the time difference. My phone had been binging since five with incoming texts from my sister Knoxie asking me to call her. I had a feeling it was about the small-rodent taxidermy-of-the-month club I’d enrolled her in for her birthday, so I was in no hurry to call her back, even if she just wanted to chat. My family and Walton, Georgia, seemed so very far away, like a movie I’d watched and loved a long time ago that was no longer relevant. It was how I wanted it, and the main reason I now lived in New York.
I bent my head over my phone as I walked toward the kitchen, in desperate need of coffee.
My progress was stopped by a solid chest in a starched white shirt that smelled faintly of soap and dog.
I stepped back quickly and looked up into blue eyes that could have been amused or annoyed—it was hard to tell this early in the morning and without coffee. “Excuse me,” I said. “Could you please point me in the direction of a coffeemaker?”