Prologue
LONDON, NOVEMBER 1945
Eve Dawson bolted upright in bed. Someone was pounding on her door. Sirens wailed outside, growing louder. Approaching. She leaped up, her instincts screaming for her to run to the air-raid shelter. But no. The war was over.
The pounding grew frantic. She shoved her arms into her dressing gown, her limbs clumsy after being jolted awake. Her flatmate, Audrey, sat up in the narrow bed beside hers. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” Eve wove through the jumble of mismatched furniture in their tiny flat and opened the door.
A police constable. Breathless, as if he’d just run a race. “You need to get out. Straightaway! They found an unexploded bomb in the rubble across the street. Come on, come on!” He waved his hand in frenzied circles, gesturing for them to follow him into the hallway and down the stairs.
“I’m not dressed,” Audrey said from behind Eve. She would say that. Always the proper lady.
“There isn’t time!” the constable said. “If that thing explodes, it will take out the entire block. You girls need to get out! Now!” He left them standing in the doorway in their pajamas and pounded on their neighbors’ door with the same urgent message.
Eve grabbed her coat, shoved her feet into the first pair of shoes she could find. Audrey moved in her slow, deliberate way, picking through the pile of shoes by the door as if deciding which pair matched her pajamas. “Come on!” Eve said. She pushed Audrey’s coat into her arms. “I don’t want to die today, do you?” She towed her down the hall toward the stairs.
They were almost to the bottom floor when Audrey halted. “Wait! My purse! It has my ID badge and ration coupons.” She turned back.
Eve yanked her forward. “Forget it. Not worth dying for. I, for one, would like to live!” She remembered the tiny baby, growing in secret inside her, and for the first time she wanted her child to live, too.
A blast of cold air struck Eve when she opened the front door, blowing through her unbuttoned coat and thin pajama pants, making her shiver. The dawning sun peeked below the clouds, offering no warmth. Across the street, a team of soldiers moved through the rubble of stones and bricks as if walking on eggshells. Workers had been clearing it for the past week, starting early every morning. Eve shivered again. The UXB could have exploded anytime.
“This way . . . this way,” the constables urged. “Quickly, now. Keep moving.” They herded everyone down the street, away from the bomb site. Bewildered people poured from neighboring buildings to flee alongside them. Eve recalled those terrible months of the Blitz. The panicked sprints to air-raid shelters while sirens wailed. Stumbling along in the dark of the blackout. But the war had ended three months ago.
“I thought we’d never have to run from bombs again,” Audrey said. “I thought we didn’t have to fear for our lives anymore.” She was winded, slowing down.
Eve slowed her pace to match, even though she longed to sprint. She had always run faster than Audrey. “Well, it seems we were wrong.”
“The Nazis destroyed this block a year ago. I can’t believe that bomb has been lying there all this time, just waiting to explode.”
“Shows how fragile life can be.” It was one of the many lessons Eve had learned during the war. Loved ones could be alive one moment and gone the next. And didn’t this fragile child inside her deserve a chance to live, too? As soon as they allowed her to go home, she would throw away the address for the back-lane doctor willing to do the procedure. Or maybe the UXB would incinerate his name along with everything else. Maybe this was a sign from God—or whoever directed things—that this was what she should do.
They reached the end of their block. Another constable pointed across the street to a church that had served as a shelter during the Blitz. They scrambled down the stone stairs, huddling inside the crypt with hundreds of other people in pajamas and dressing gowns, waiting for experts to defuse the bomb. Eve had plenty of time to think of all the things she wished she’d rescued. Audrey was right about needing her purse. It was going to be a huge bother replacing all her ID cards and ration books.
“What time is it?” Audrey asked. “We’ll be late for work. Do you think the church will let us use the telephone so we can call and explain?”
Eve looked at her watch, a present from Alfie. “It’s too early to call. Not even seven yet. Honestly, Audrey, you worry about the dumbest things.” Eve wore the watch all the time, even to bed at night. If the UXB did go off, at least she had one thing to remember him by.
Audrey inched closer, leaning in, lowering her voice. “Eve, listen. I need to tell you a secret.”
Eve hid a smile. It was so like Audrey to be so serious, so dramatic.
“Should I cross my heart and swear on my life not to tell?” Eve asked.
Audrey didn’t smile. “I think I’m pregnant.”
Eve barely stopped herself from saying, I’m pregnant, too. They had done everything else together these past six years, so of course, why not have babies together? Except that Audrey had a husband and Eve didn’t. “Congratulations,” she managed to say, hugging her.
“I haven’t written to tell Robert yet. I’m afraid to. It was an accident. We took precautions . . .”
“He’ll be happy, just the same,” she said, squeezing Audrey’s hands. “Especially if it’s a boy. Doesn’t every man want a son?” She remembered, too late, how Audrey’s father doted on his son, ignoring his daughter all these years. She wished she had bitten her tongue.
Audrey didn’t seem to hear her as she continued on. “This morning, with this bomb—I realized how badly I want to stay safe from now on. We risked our lives so many times during the war, and it didn’t seem to matter because nobody knew what tomorrow would bring, whether we would live or die, or if the Nazis would pour across the channel and murder us. But the war is over and Robert is safe, and I want to stay safe, too, until it’s time to move to America to be with him. I want our baby to be safe.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m leaving London. I’m going home to Wellingford Hall.”
Eve took a moment to respond. “What about your job? And our flat?”
“I’ll give them my notice. Today, even. You won’t have any problem finding a new flatmate.”
It would happen, eventually. Eve knew that once the mountains of paperwork were sorted, Audrey would leave England and follow her GI husband to his home in America. This bomb that had dropped into their lives was an omen of change. For both of them.
“I’m going to miss you, Eve,” Audrey said.
“Me, too.” Eve would be alone again. Alone to cope with all the decisions and changes that a fatherless baby would bring. Why had she dared to believe that Audrey would always be by her side? That Audrey would always need her?
Three long hours later, they climbed the stairs from the crypt, the UXB safely defused, the area searched for more hidden dangers. “I feel like a fool wearing only pajamas,” Audrey said as they emerged onto the street.
“We aren’t the only ones.” Eve gestured to the other shivering people scurrying home beneath gray November skies.