‘Haven’t I just been telling you that? I disagree with war. I’m simply not cut out to destroy, and I’m hoping that one day people will see that as a good thing. I’m never going back there.’ She could barely bring her face up so that her eyes met his, but when she eventually did, he noticed that she looked doubtful, uncertain, as though she knew more than he did.

As he fell to sleep, it occurred to him that he had not told her about the exact fate of the Irish officer. He’d lost track, even in his storytelling. There was too much to speak of. Impossible to keep them all in mind. The thought made him sick with sorrow all over again, as though it was only yesterday that he’d dug the grave for the Irish officer with the charming smile and the straight teeth, who had been laid to rest without his head.

41

THE THREE DAYS and three nights vanished far too quickly. Vivian felt the moments slipping from her grasp. It was like hanging from a cliff and feeling the earth crumbling beneath her fingertips, knowing she would soon plunge, fall into nothingness. The time came when their train tickets and Enid’s expectations called them back to Blackwell. They packed slowly and silently; a deadening fog of despair replaced the vapour of enthralment that had hung in the hotel room since they’d arrived.

‘We could stay here in London. We don’t have to go back to Blackwell. At least not except to pick up Mabel,’ suggested Howard in a rush, but even as he suggested it, it was clear from his face that he knew it was unworkable. They would return to pick up the child and be swallowed up by respectability and duty. She wished they had brought Mabel with them. Maybe then they would have had a chance.

‘How will it be when we get back there?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. She wished that just once he’d lie and say, ‘The same as it has been here,’ or something else reassuring. It was useless; they knew it wouldn’t be like this. They would not be able to touch one another or even to talk to one another without extreme care and meticulous planning. The freedom and spontaneity they had enjoyed these past few days would be wrenched away. The right to one another that they felt so acutely now would be thrown into doubt and uncertainty.

‘We’ll just have to be careful,’ she urged him.

‘Or not.’ He stopped folding his shirts and held his arms out wide, an expansive, vulnerable gesture, something between a shrug and a suggestion.

‘What do you mean?’

He came around to her side of the bed and took both her hands in his own. ‘I don’t care if they discover us. I don’t care who knows. Do you?’ His eyes shone with alert intensity and self-assurance; he was peering carefully at her, hoping to find the same expression reflected back. She blinked and he pulled away a fraction as though the movement in the air caused by her flickering lashes had been a blow. She was an open book to him.