Daddy looked up from his newspaper, face only a few shades grimmer than usual. “She’s feeling a bit under the weather today. I’m certain it’s nothing to worry over, Lily White.”

No. She told herself to be calm, that not every upset stomach was a symptom of this nasty flu that seemed to be getting more serious instead of ebbing away. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn to the sideboard. “I’ll go and check on her, shall I?”

“Check on who, me? I’m only a minute later than usual.” Ivy, apparently having just come in the room, elbowed Lily playfully aside and grabbed a plate.

She let herself be elbowed. “Mama. Daddy says she isn’t feeling well.”

Ivy’s hands stilled mid-reach for the eggs. Her gaze, a bit wide, turned to tangle with Lily’s. She didn’t have to speak her fears or reiterate that a shocking number of girls at the school were out sick—and that one of them from another class had died. They’d already whispered their worries and their prayers last night.

Lily fastened on a smile. “Eat. I’ll go and see her now.” She fled the room without waiting for a response from her sister, running up the stairs and into her parents’ bedchamber with only a cursory knock on the door.

Nothing could happen to Mama. It couldn’t, not with things still awkward between them. Not with the step forward that the garden party had provided being largely undone by the hours Lily had then spent at the OB in the last week, searching every single archived photograph for those two German faces.

She’d found them. From the early days of the war, some of the first film she’d processed for Hall. They’d not been officers worth noting at the time, just soldiers who must have shown enough promise to get a promotion to something that led to a bigger promotion, and then another. She didn’t much care how they climbed the ranks, only that she hadn’t been imagining their familiarity.

It had taken far longer than the hour she’d expected, though. And since her regular work didn’t exactly halt, and they’d been shorthanded at the hospital too, it had meant hours away from home, where she’d usually have been trying to continue the patching of her relationship with Mama.

Hours when she should have been here. That was so clear now. Why had she pushed her family into second place—no, third? Why hadn’t she focused on Mama and let everything else slip instead?