“Do hurry,” she says. “I’d like to take a walk before it starts to rain. Oh, damn. Never mind. It’s already started. How I hate the weather here.”

“I don’t see how you can live in London and complain about the weather anywhere else.”

“Because it can’t make up its mind, that’s why. First one thing and then another.”

Annie, washing dishes at the sink, turns her head over her shoulder. “Mackintoshes are in the boot room, Miss Margaret.”

Margaret heaves a sigh, stubs out her cigarette, gathers the cat, and rises from the table. I stare out the window and listen to the sound of her footsteps on the floorboards. A drizzle’s begun to patter, sure enough. When the footsteps disappear, I turn to Annie.

“Don’t say a word to her, do you hear me?”

She shuts off the faucet and faces me. “You can’t hide it much longer, mind.”

“Oh? And what do you know about it?”

“Because Mrs. Thorpe used to look the same way when she was breeding, that’s why.” She clasps her hands together. “It’s true, then? A wee babe? Dear little Benedict’s sweet child?”

“Why, didn’t you know for certain?”

“Oh, aye, you can never be sure, Mrs. Thorpe, not until the lady says so herself.”

I smacked my forehead. “It’s a secret. Remember that.”

“What’s a secret?”

Margaret stands in the doorway, arms full of raincoats, face all stricken. Her hair’s coming loose from the knot at her neck. She looks from me to Annie and back again, and her gaze slides downward, to my breasts, lower still. The raincoats slide to the floor. Tuxedo, galloping past her legs, makes a heroic last-second leap.

“Bloody hell. When did that happen?”

“July,” I say. “The night Oakes was murdered.”

Lulu

July 1943

(The Bahamas)

Every morning, the Liberators took off from Oakes Field and flew in formation over the ocean, like a flock of ungainly birds. It was all part of their training, and it made a terrible noise. I used to sit at my desk and grit my teeth against the immense, subterranean racket as each airplane lumbered down the runway and out to sea, four Rolls Royce engines churning in unison to drown out the ancient clackety-clack of my Remington typewriter.