LITMIR.BIZ

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to encircle his waist…the feel of his own arms wrapped about my shoulders. Buttons, hard beneath my cheek, the crowd disappearing from around us, melting away to leave us alone in a suddenly peaceful world. There was nothing else. There simply was nothing else.

      Long after my heartbeat had returned to normal, and my short breaths had deepened once again, he released me. I stood back and looked up at him, his familiar face tired, but still so strong, so beautiful. I reached up to touch his jaw with trembling fingers, and only just stopped myself from tracing his lower lip with my thumb. I ached for him to lower that mouth to mine, and to put all my doubts to flight, but his expression was one of concern, nothing more.

      ‘Sweetheart, how are you feeling? Is the fever gone? We must get you a hot drink.’

      He stepped back, leaving me swaying slightly with the loss of his touch, and bent to pick up my bag. He held out his free hand to me but I shook my head; to hold his hand as he wished, as a child, would be worse than not touching him at all, and my heart cracked a little. After all I’d been through, I was still Oli’s little sister.

      I followed him to the car. ‘Why are you here, instead of Jack?’ I wanted him to say it was his idea, that he’d asked to come particularly, but deep down I knew he hadn’t.

      ‘He thought it’d be easier for you, at least when you arrived,’ Archie said. ‘Someone you know a little better, after…’ he cleared his throat ‘…well…he thought maybe since—’

      ‘He thought I’d be scared to be alone with him?’ I couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of my voice, and Archie smiled. It lifted my spirits to see it, despite everything.

      ‘Aye, well the same thing occurred to Lizzy when you went missing. People care for you, Kitty,’ he added softly. We’d reached the car, and his face turned solemn. ‘We understand what this is going to do to you. To…your reputation. How people will see you. And how it’s going to bring back an awful thing you’d want to forget if you could. It’s an amazing thing you’re doing, and we’ll do everything we can to—’

      ‘Thank you,’ I said, my tone inadvertently short. He was only trying to say the right thing, but the thought of whoever ‘we’ might be, sitting around discussing what a brave little soul I was for speaking out against Colonel Drewe, made me shrivel inside with mortification. I saw the miserable realisation on his face, and touched his arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired. I am grateful though. And it’s so lovely to see you, Arch.’

      ‘And you,’ he said, relaxing a little, and opened the car door for me. ‘Hold on tight, the roads haven’t improved since you were here last.’

      He was right; I remembered feeling queasy on my way to the ferry, and that had been worsened by the way the car had constantly swerved to avoid the bigger shell holes, but in the past month the roads must have taken quite a pounding, and the going was jolting and slow. We arrived in full dark, and I was taken to a small hotel just up the road from where Oli was being held.

      ‘Can I see him?’ I asked, when Archie pointed out the building, a large, dark blob against the night.

      ‘Not tonight, darling.’ The casual word, one he had used ever since I’d known him, now had the power to slice through me. But even if he’d meant it in the way I longed for, his earlier reminder that my reputation was about to be ruined told me once and for all that it was too late now. When he left me to return to HQ I accepted the light, brotherly kiss on my cheek, and told myself it was just as well he still thought of me as a child after all. I eventually fell asleep to the hollow boom of distant guns, and only realised when I was awoken by a lull, that I hadn’t even noticed them.

      The following morning Jack greeted me in the lobby. He rose from his seat, and automatically started to pull his uniform jacket straight, then his dark blue eyes met mine and he stopped fussing, came over and, without a moment’s hesitation, put his arms around me. I almost sagged in relief, but held myself firm, accepting his comfort, and then smiled up at him.

      ‘Evie’s right about you,’ I said, and he looked both pleased and slightly embarrassed.

      ‘In that case I hope she’s said something flattering.’ Then his own smile faded, and his expression held echoes of Archie’s solemn look from the night before. ‘Kitty, I want to sit down and talk to you for a while, somewhere private. Would that be all right?’

      ‘Of course. Where should we go?’

      ‘There’s an office at HQ we can use. It’s just a few minutes away.’ He glanced down at my footwear, as if he half expected me to be wearing kitten heels and stockings. But although I’d wanted to look smart, Frances and Lizzy had both said variations of the same thing: you were working when it happened, and you weren’t dressed to catch a man’s eye then. Best not look like some flighty girl now, when it matters most.

      I tightened the belt on my coat, and knocked the flat heel of my boot on the floor. ‘I can walk for miles,’ I assured him, and his smile returned.

      ‘Well then, shall we?’ He held out his arm, and I took it, and together we walked out into the rubble-strewn street.

      HQ was, in fact, another hotel, but much larger. However, the room Jack showed me into had clearly been a smallish storeroom of some kind in its past existence, and a tiny desk was pushed into the corner, with a typewriter parked precariously on the edge and a single upturned chair taking up the remaining room on it.

      I looked at it doubtfully, but as I turned back to Jack, mouth open to ask where I should sit, I saw the reason for the squashed up arrangement of furniture: someone had jammed two tattered armchairs into the space behind the door. They sat arm-to-arm, but even that cramped space looked comfortable and, most important of all, friendly.

      I felt a little tearful as I realised this had been Jack’s doing, I could tell from his anxious expression, and from his relief when I nodded. He looked so much like Archie that I had to swallow a new lump in my throat as I sat down.

      ‘If you’d rather not speak to me, you only have to say,’ he said quietly. ‘And if you feel like crying, don’t hold back on my account. I can stay, or go, as you like.’

      His voice was low, like Archie’s, but his accent was firmly north-western. No hint of Scotland anywhere in it. It was close to my own accent, in fact, and that familiarity helped as he started to talk, to explain all he knew of Oliver’s circumstances, and, finally, gently, to coax out of me the story of what had happened on the road that freezing February night.

      It was hard at first. Every word felt like a tug on an un-anaesthetised tooth, but as I talked they began to come more easily. I told him how I’d been so excited about driving alone for the first time, how Evie had patiently gone over and over everything I would need to know… I felt the constant ache of guilt over the fury I had unleashed on her blameless head, and tried to say as much to Jack, but he shook his head.

      ‘She understood. But don’t give her a thought just now. I want you to get the worst part of the story out of your head and into mine, here, where it doesn’t matter. Once you’ve spoken it out loud it’ll be easier next time.’

      So I told him the rest, and when I explained how Drewe had pinned me to the filthy, blood-soaked bed in the back of the ambulance, his face took on a strange expression. Lizzy had told me he’d known Drewe many years before, had fought with him in Africa, and had respected the man he’d been. Now I could see dismay and regret at the man Drewe had become, and I wouldn’t be the one to sit in judgement while he mourned the fall of a great man, but for me there was only anger.

      ‘They must see Oli was provoked,’ I said when I’d finished. ‘He shouldn’t have hit the colonel, but Evie said Drewe struck him first.’

      ‘There’s no proof of that,’ Jack said. ‘We must stick to the fact of provocation, and not muddy the waters with a self-defence plea.’

      ‘Do you think it will work?’ I asked, my voice coming out small and scared-sounding.

      Jack

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