Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
- When We Meet Again
- A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
- Discussion Guide
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Joe slid his arms around her, pulling her closer in a comforting embrace. Her first reaction was that she wished he was Theo, and she felt ashamed of herself.
“It’s all right. I think I know where she might be. Did you hear me, Alice?”
She opened her eyes. “Where?”
“There’s only one handling house in north London, the rest are south or in the counties.”
“What sort of godforsaken place is it?” she asked, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“I don’t know that, but at least I know where it is.”
Thirty-seven
“The bloody printers burned down,” George said grimly, after he welcomed Theo into his office.
It wasn’t the reception that Theo had expected. Rupert had been killed in action, and Theo had thought George would raise that straightaway, but he hadn’t mentioned the tragic news yet. Instead, he ranted on about the fire as he explained how one of their publications had been there for typesetting—on hot metal, as was the usual method—and the press had caught on fire; it had nothing to do with the Luftwaffe.
“At least it wasn’t Alice’s book,” Theo replied, imagining how distraught she would have been, and how much he would have wanted to be there to comfort her.
“It’s still a big setback, Theo. One we can’t afford. At least no one was injured.”
From his visit with Alice, Theo knew the printers hadn’t been able to maintain the equipment properly, but it was a blow to lose another printing facility.
George sank down heavily onto a sofa and looked at Theo wearily. “You don’t need to tell Walter about this, though, not just yet.”
“Of course not.” He met George’s melancholy eyes and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry about Rupert, George. My deepest condolences.”
“Thank you, Theo, and thank you for coming back. I do appreciate it—I need to spend some time with Clare and the girls.”
The telegram had reached Walter while he was deliberating over whether to give Theo those three extra months to prove why he shouldn’t sell; the news that Rupert had been killed had helped make up Walter’s mind. Rupert’s de Havilland plane had been on a reconnaissance exercise when it was involved in an accident and lost at sea, and while they hadn’t recovered the bodies, it was believed that neither the pilot nor the navigator could have survived.
George sat with rounded shoulders and his head hung low. “We still can’t fathom it, not really. It just hasn’t sunk in, to tell you the truth. I suppose if you don’t believe that it’s real, then in a way it’s not, is it?”