Goodnight from London by Jennifer Robson

Author:Jennifer Robson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

September 1941

Another Monday morning, and as Ruby dragged herself up the steps to the PW offices she was assailed with the depressing knowledge that five and a half days of misery were waiting for her.

It had been a little more than two months since Mary’s death, and Kaz showed no signs of emerging from the fog of grief that clung to him like so much poison gas. She had tried to help, asking tentatively if he wanted to talk with her, then inviting him to come to dinner with her and Vanessa, or even go to the Old Bell for lunch, but nothing could tempt him from his desk and the solace of work.

And there was no end of news to keep them busy. Crete had been lost to Axis forces at the end of May, the German invasion of the USSR had begun a month later, and by the end of the summer the Soviets seemed perilously close to defeat. And when that happened, Kaz never tired of telling anyone within earshot, Hitler would once again turn his attention to Western Europe and the long-delayed invasion of Britain. It was only a matter of time.

Ruby was convinced that Kaz was drinking at the office, unremarkable behavior among most newsmen she knew but entirely out of character for her editor and friend. She’d smelled something sharp on his breath the week before, and later that afternoon he had tripped over his words more than once during their editorial meeting. It didn’t help that he wasn’t eating properly, his clothes all but hanging off his broad shoulders, and from the look of his hair and stubbled face he was long overdue for a good bath.

She tried calling Bennett at home, again and again, but he was never there, and Vanessa didn’t have a telephone number for him at work. The only person who knew how to reach him was Kaz, and if Bennett had been in contact with his old friend, Kaz wasn’t saying.

What made it all the harder was that she, too, missed Mary desperately. There were moments, over those bleak days of late summer, when Ruby would have given anything for a dose of her friend’s canny advice, or a glimpse of her rueful smile. Even Mary in one of her foul moods would have been enough to leaven Ruby’s spirits.

The instant she walked through the door, she knew something was wrong. Evelyn was crying—levelheaded, sane, endlessly sensible Evelyn, who never seemed to get upset, and had soldiered through the days and weeks after Mary’s death with nothing more than reddened eyes.

“What is wrong?” Ruby asked, her heart seizing with fear. “Has someone . . . ?”

“No, no. It’s only . . . Captain Bennett and Mr. Bennett are here. Kaz isn’t coming back.”

“What?” Ruby gasped. “Ever?”

“Sorry, no—just for a while. They’ll explain it all, they said. You might as well go on in.”

Ruby rushed down the hall, desperate to learn what had become of Kaz, but the door to his office was shut.

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