Lilies, Lies and Love by Jackie French

Author:Jackie French
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

True duty is done quietly, without publicity, without reward, even without hope you will succeed. It is perhaps the greatest virtue, for it must be done with love.

Miss Lily, 1914

‘Sophie?’ She woke to find Daniel sitting on the side of her bed. He had not shared her room in England. The staff were to be trusted, but still it would not be safe. Nor did she think she could easily accept the caresses of two men, even if she truly reciprocated only his.

‘Daniel, what is it? Are you all right? The children?’

‘They are fine. I . . . I am not.’

‘What is it?’ she demanded urgently, sitting up.

‘It’s hard to explain. Maybe if I just said I am closer to being John tonight than Daniel . . .’

‘What can I do?’ she asked softly.

‘Walk with me. Walking always works. Or nearly always. And I need you with me.’

He had already dressed. She scrambled for a dress, stockings, shoes, coat, a hat pulled down both for warmth and to hide her face, a thick scarf.

They walked quietly down the stairs. Daniel headed for the front door. She shook her head and led him out the servants’ entrance then up the stairs to the footpath.

Fog swirled, dense as custard, then vanished and appeared once more. She took his arm. ‘We could get lost in this.’

‘Not if we keep to the left-hand side each time, then the right-hand side on the way back.’

‘You’ve done this other nights.’

‘Yes. But not with you.’

‘You should have asked me.’

‘I didn’t want to distract you.’

‘You wouldn’t have. I think this would have steadied me too.’ For somehow, there in the fog, their footsteps echoing, it was just the two of them in the world.

A one-eyed cat snarled at them as if they might be after the rat it had spied behind a rubbish bin, then it too vanished in the fog. Turn left. Turn left. Turn left. She could smell the river, that vast appalling stench, or another river, just as smelly. She could smell coal and sausages . . . yes, over there — taxis pulled up outside — was a working man’s café, with sausages and eggs and fried bread all night long, and tea strong enough to dissolve a spoon.

She didn’t want tea. She wanted Daniel and the river at Thuringa, and Rose and Danny and Lily and Midge and so much else she loved and one day she would have them again. And just now she, and this man she loved, alone in the fog, were enough.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked quietly. Even being in London must bring back so many war-time memories.

‘I am now we are walking.’

Her heart burned, just a little. ‘Promise me you will always ask if you need to walk, or anything else?’

‘I promise.’

‘Sometimes,’ she offered, ‘I close my eyes and think I can smell the hot sand by the river.’

‘And the female wombats on heat.’

‘Is that what that stink is? I’ve always wondered.’

She could almost hear him smile.

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