“Perfect,” said Gwen. “I shall find him something along those lines. I hope you have a wonderful time, Isabelle. Give your darling boy a kiss for me, won’t you?”

“I will,” said Isabelle. “Gwen?”

“Yes?”

Isabelle hesitated.

“Thanks for the call,” she said. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”

“Yours as well, Isabelle. Goodbye.”

She hung up, then sat by the telephone for a while until the tears stopped. Then she wiped her face and went in to dinner.

Sudbury was a good sixty miles from London, so Iris had set her alarm for the crack of dawn. The jangling sent her reaching for anything at hand to throw at the clock before she was fully conscious, but she stopped short of letting fly as her brain delivered the morning agenda in time.

She dressed quickly, looked longingly at the whisky bottle, then grabbed her handbag and left for the station.

She breakfasted from a tea trolley on the train, and was sufficiently revived by the time she reached the town to marshal her persona into Mary McTague, cub reporter for the Telegraph.

She didn’t know Sudbury. She vaguely recalled waking up there once, in the bed of an American Army Air Force navigator whose name she could not remember and whom she never saw again. She sneaked out and caught the first train back to London, reporting for duty only a few minutes late, trying not to think what she must have smelled like. She wondered if the American ever thought of her. She wondered if he made it through alive. She wondered how she’d got to Sudbury in the first place. Navigators certainly knew their way around, she thought, smiling to herself.

Nothing about the town appeared familiar when she emerged from the station. It didn’t help that the station itself was removed from the center, situated near a bend in the river Stour, which sidestepped the town on its way to more pressing business elsewhere. It had been prettier once, she supposed. Pretty enough for Gainsborough and Constable to paint their way around. She doubted they would be as inspired by the ugly concrete pillboxes now dotting the landscape, ready for the invasion that never came, their guns now removed. Sparrows flew in and out of their narrow window slots.

She consulted her directions and walked through the eastern part of the town, skirting the center.

The Cockerells lived in a large brick house, not what anyone would think of as a mansion, but certainly more sprawling than necessary to accommodate the needs of a single family. One wing was mostly glass, and she could see a veritable jungle inside—tropical trees and vines, a riot of flowers unlike anything she had ever seen in England. She thought she even glimpsed some brightly coloured birds flying through it all—parrots, maybe. The other wing held a small ballroom. She could see a grand piano covered with a muslin drape, and a small collection of carved wooden music stands huddling forlornly in a corner.