That Burning Summer by Lydia Syson

Author:Lydia Syson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471400544
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Published: 2013-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

This time Henryk had seen her coming. How could he fail? He hadn’t stopped watching for Peggy from the moment the first faint trace of pink appeared at the window. Long before that he’d made himself ready, creeping out and washing under the moonlight. He wanted to be clean and fresh when she came, as fresh as possible.

Just inside the porch he stood, with a sense of ownership he identified with grim irony. An Englishman’s home is his castle … one of the sentences they’d recited when they first reached Liverpool. Until he came to this church, he hadn’t slept alone in a room since leaving Poland. Tents. Barrack rooms. Camps. And now he had all this to himself. And such a sky to go with it too.

She came early, when trails of mist still hovered low, just above the glassy water, dissolving as he watched. He swung open the door the instant Peggy rounded the corner. Henryk watched her catch sight of him, stop, smile and then hurry on. He could hardly believe how much he had missed her. He had let himself depend on her return.

‘You come back.’

Henryk could have been making a statement or asking a question. It might have been a plea for the future. He wasn’t sure if he had said it quite right. It didn’t matter. There she was. She had come back. He could almost touch her now.

There was something insubstantial about her, ethereal. It was partly an effect of the thin dawn light. Paler, she seemed, more frail. In just a night, a day, and a night. And from the way she stared, perhaps he had changed too.

‘Were you awfully sick?’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. It was the beans, you know.’ She thrust out a hand, which made him jump, but it was full of flowers. All colours, papery petals on stick stalks, and such a smell.

‘Sweet peas,’ she told him. He buried his nose in the peppery sweetness, and thanked her. As he took the bundle of stems, his fingers closed round hers, just for a moment. Warm and dry and electrifying.

‘So stupid of me. I can’t tell you how … I had no idea.’

‘No.’

He had worked it out in the end, once the worst had passed. And then, as his capsized stomach struggled to right itself, he held on to the memory of her sitting next to him, nonchalantly nibbling. Of course she hadn’t known. Just as she had no idea how lovely her mouth was. Nor that he had actually begun to envy the beans as she ate. Or how much he wanted to be feeling her slightly off-centre teeth against his own skin. But these were thoughts he had to banish.

‘I am fine now,’ he said.

‘But still … I just can’t believe I was so stupid. Such an idiot.’

‘But now it is finished, and we are both better.’

He could take her hand properly and lead her inside. Except somehow he couldn’t.

‘Yes, much better, thank goodness. And

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