Island in the East

by Jenny Ashcroft

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Romance; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

With a sizzling love affair playing out against sisterly rivalry and epic family drama, Island in the East is the perfect read for fans of Victoria Hislop, Kate Furnivall and Tracy Rees.

Two great loves. One shattering betrayal. A war that changes everything.

Singapore, 1897
Twenty-year-old identical twins, Harriet and Mae, born from a scandalous affair, have spent their lives slighted by gossips. They've carried each other through the loneliness, believing that together they can survive anything.

But then their mysterious benefactor sends them to Singapore to live with his relative, the watchful David Keeley, who will choose one of them to marry. In the tension of David's house, a distance opens up between the twins, but it is only when they meet the handsome Alex Blake that their relationship truly fractures, resulting in a life-shattering betrayal with devastating consequences . . .

1941
Ivy, an intelligence officer with the women's naval service, is posted to wartime Singapore. Carrying her own ghosts from Blitz-torn London, she arrives to the looming threat of a Japanese invasion. Nothing can prepare her for what's waiting on the island—not the unexpected love, nor the strangers from her grandmother, Mae's, past, and the shocking secrets that now echo down through the generations.

Vivid, authentic and utterly beautiful, Island in the East is evocative, atmospheric and romantic historical fiction at its very best.

Release date: November 2, 2017

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

Ivy paused outside the door to the surgery waiting room and took a slow breath. She dropped her eyes to her feet, her brogues on the hospital linoleum, the way her nylons crinkled at the ankle. You can do this. She straightened her naval uniform jacket and made her way in.

The waiting room was silent. There was an oak door on the far side with a brass plaque reading, DOCTOR MICHAEL GREGORY, MBCHB, MD, CCT, FRCPSYCH. Faded armchairs lined two other walls, a desk the third. A receptionist, about the same age as Ivy – mid-twenties or thereabouts – sat at the desk. She had a battered copy of Time magazine spread out before her, a cigarette in her hand.

She smiled up at Ivy. ‘Hello.’

‘Hello. I’m Ivy Harcourt, here to see Doctor Gregory.’

‘Yes, of course.’ The woman waved her cigarette at the oak door. ‘He won’t be long, he’s just finishing with a sailor back from the Med. Take a seat.’

Ivy lowered herself into the chair closest to her, feeling the springs creak. She crossed her legs, and then uncrossed them.

The receptionist eyed her curiously. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Ivy.

‘Cocoa?’

‘I’m fine, really.’

‘Coffee, then? We’ve got Camp.’

Ivy shook her head. ‘Thank you.’ She couldn’t imagine drinking anything.

The woman continued to appraise her. ‘All right, are you?’ she asked at length.

‘Apparently not.’ Ivy forced a laugh. It sounded horribly nervous. ‘I suppose that’s why I’m here.’

The woman opened her mouth, clearly ready to ask more, but then the oak door opened. A pale boy in sailors’ whites slunk out, head bowed. Another man followed. Doctor Gregory, Ivy presumed, from his tweed suit and capable air. He wore spectacles, a bright red handkerchief in his pocket. Ivy wondered how often he offered it to his patients.

He turned to her. He had kind eyes.

‘Officer Harcourt,’ he said, ‘do come in.’

 

The office was small, heated by a gas burner. It had a mahogany desk, two more armchairs, and a single window which was criss-crossed with brown tape to protect it from bomb blasts. A rug covered the linoleum floor and a vase of plastic flowers stood on the desk. Someone had tried to make it homely.

Doctor Gregory settled Ivy into one of the armchairs then sat himself in the other. He reached across to his desk and pulled a file from it, a pipe too. He asked her if she minded him smoking. (She didn’t.)

‘So,’ he said. ‘You’ve rather been through it.’

Ivy cleared her throat. ‘I’m…’ her voice cracked. She tried again. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Your ribs aren’t causing you any more pain?’

‘No.’

‘And no more breathing difficulties?’ He made a show of checking his notes. Ivy thought it might be for her benefit, to make her feel less like he knew everything about her already. ‘You had a nasty infection from the dust,’ he said. ‘You were buried for nine hours, I see.’

‘I’m better now.’

He gave her a troubled smile. ‘But you’ve been referred to me.’

She swallowed, wishing she’d asked for a glass of water earlier. ‘Yes.’

‘Because the doctor who’s been treating you since the accident,’ another glance at the notes, ‘Doctor Myer, he doesn’t think you’re fit for service.’

‘No.’

‘Do you think you’re fit?’

‘I want to go back to work.’

‘Hmmm,’ Doctor Gregory said. ‘Doctor Myer is concerned about,’ he flicked a page in the file, adjusted his spectacles, ‘recurrent and acute attacks of claustrophobia coupled with severe shock.’ He looked over at Ivy. ‘Is that right?’

Ivy forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘I’m fine.’

His eyes crinkled regretfully. ‘He thinks not. And I’m told that you’ve requested a transfer from your old post in Camberwell. That you lodged the request from hospital?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You were caught by that bomb very near the bunker you worked at, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’d been badly shocked at work, earlier that evening?’

‘Yes.’ She had to force the word out.

‘You don’t want to return there after all that happened that night?’

‘Would you?’

‘We’re not here to talk about me.’

Ivy shifted in her seat. The room was so hot.

‘Ivy,’ Gregory said, ‘I want you to tell me, in your own words, why you can’t face returning to Camberwell.’

Sweat itched beneath her woollen uniform. She gestured at the heater. ‘Do you mind if we turn that down?’

He set his pipe on his armrest, got up and crossed the room to the heater. He looked back at Ivy as he knelt to turn the dial. ‘I know this must be difficult for you,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to be here. No one ever does. I try not to take it personally.’ He smiled. It was a joke. Ivy tried to summon a smile too. ‘But for me to help you heal,’ he said, ‘I need to ask you these questions. I want you to trust me, to talk to me about everything that’s happened. This will all be much easier if you do. Does that sound all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Ivy, even though she wasn’t sure it did.

‘Good.’ He reclaimed his seat, turned the pages of his file. ‘Let’s start with something a bit easier. When did you join the Naval Service?’

‘At the start of the war.’

‘Why the Navy?’

‘My old tutor suggested it.’

‘Because of your languages?’

‘Yes. He knew they needed people who spoke German. He thought of me.’

‘And you’re a listener.’ Gregory smiled enquiringly. ‘What is that, exactly?’

Ivy looked at his file. ‘You don’t have it written down?’

‘Humour me.’

Her back prickled. She heard Gregory’s words again. You’d been badly shocked, earlier that evening. She knew where he was steering her. ‘I’m not meant to talk about what I do,’ she said. ‘Walls have ears.’

His lips twitched. ‘A valiant try, Ivy. But the only ears here are mine, and I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. So…’ He nodded, indicating that she should go on.

‘We eavesdrop,’ she said guardedly, ‘on radio signals.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Wrens, men from Naval Intelligence. There are some WAAFs at our station as well.’

‘In Camberwell?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who do you eavesdrop on?’

‘Ships, communications coming out of Germany…’

‘Pilots mainly though, yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Ivy slowly. ‘At our station.’

‘British pilots?’

‘We hear them sometimes. But we’re mainly interested in what the Luftwaffe are saying.’

‘Why?’

‘They give things away when they talk,’ she said. ‘About where their ships are below. We send that to the Admiralty. Then their flying course and altitude. It helps Fighter Command know where to send the spits to intercept them.’

‘Very clever.’ He sucked on his pipe. ‘Is that all you hear? The coordinates and the targets?’

‘No,’ she said carefully.

‘No?’

‘No, the men talk about other things too.’

‘Such as?’

‘The moon,’ she said, knowing it wasn’t what he wanted from her, ‘how beautiful it looks on the sea.’

‘It must do, up there.’

‘Yes.’

‘What else do you hear?’

She felt like she was being circled, backed into a corner.

‘The pilots talk to us,’ she said, still evading him.

‘Talk to you?’

‘They’ve guessed we’re listening.’

Gregory smiled. ‘And what do they say, Ivy?’

‘They say things like, Guten Abend, meine Fräulein. Deutschland ruft an. It means, Germany calling.’

‘Yes, I speak some German myself.’ He looked at his notes. ‘You studied at Cambridge?’

‘Yes.’

‘Japanese too?’

‘Yes.’

He glanced up at her. ‘I love languages.’

She smiled tightly, tensed for his next question.

‘And what do our boys say?’ Gregory asked. ‘In their spits.’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Give me an example.’

She took a breath. ‘Tally-ho,’ she said. ‘Watch your altitude, your wing. Bandits, ten o’clock.’ She raised her shoulders. ‘They say so much.’

‘And,’ his eyes became pained, ‘occasionally you hear them die.’

Even though she’d been braced for it, she flinched.

‘Ivy?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘How do you feel, when you hear them die?’

‘Upset. Very upset.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I think of the people they love, who love them. I wonder if they know what’s happening.’

He grimaced sadly, like he understood.

There was a short silence. She wondered hopefully if he was going to leave it there.

But, ‘You heard someone you care about die, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘The last time you were at the station, barely an hour before you were caught by that bomb.’

She stared.

‘Ivy?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ she said.

‘I think it will help you to do so.’

‘I want to forget about it.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think you can. Not until you face it.’

She said nothing.

‘You can’t run from things, Ivy, you’ll be doing it your whole life otherwise.’

She looked at her brogues. There was a scuff on her right toe. She should polish it.

‘Doctor Myer told me that in hospital you woke screaming Felix’s name in the night, and that you needed to have a light to sleep. He wrote here,’ Gregory tapped his file, ‘that your claustrophobia after being buried was so bad that you never wanted to go to the shelter, you begged to be allowed to stay on the ward instead.’

Ivy felt her cheeks flame.

‘No one’s judging you,’ said Gregory, ‘except perhaps yourself.’

‘I’m all right now,’ she said. ‘Really.’

‘You don’t need a light to sleep any more?’

Ivy’s flush deepened.

‘How are your nights now you’re home, Ivy? How are you when you go to the shelter?’

She said nothing. But she pictured herself, trembling like a child in terror beneath the corrugated roof of her gran’s Anderson, waiting for the next bomb that would find her.

‘Why don’t you want to return to Camberwell?’ Gregory asked.

‘I,’ she began, ‘I…’

‘What worries you more?’ Gregory asked gently. ‘The idea of going back to where you were caught by that bomb, or to where you heard such a horrendous thing happen to your beau?’

‘He wasn’t my beau.’

‘No?’

‘No. He only used to be.’

‘Perhaps,’ Gregory said, ‘that made it worse?’

Ivy pulled at her collar. ‘That heater’s still so warm.’

‘I can’t imagine how traumatic it must have been,’ Gregory said, ‘to hear something like that, I really can’t. And then to nearly be killed yourself, the very same night.’

She turned towards the steamed-up window. It was getting dark. Four o’clock, and it was already almost night.

‘Why are you so keen to go back to work, Ivy? What do you think you’ll gain by taking another posting?’

‘I’ll be able to move on.’

‘Fail,’ Gregory said.

Startled, Ivy said, ‘Excuse me?’

‘You won’t move on,’ he said. ‘You can’t until you’ve processed what’s happened.’

‘I have processed it.’

‘You won’t even speak about it.’

She looked again at the window.

‘What’s bothering you outside, Ivy?’

‘It’s getting dark,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘I don’t like to go out in the dark any more.’ The admission was out before she could stop it.

He sighed. ‘Go on then, go home.’

That surprised her. ‘You’ll certify me fit, authorise my transfer?’ It seemed too easy, too good to be true.

‘Of course I won’t,’ Gregory said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Come at one, we’ll have more time that way.’

 

She was there by five to, determined to do better.

‘Back again?’ asked the receptionist.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Ivy.

The woman looked at her, musing. ‘Mind me asking what’s wrong with you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

The receptionist sighed. ‘They all say that.’

 

The fire was on low in Gregory’s office that day. It had started raining since Ivy had arrived at the hospital; the drops slid down the windowpane.

‘You’re living with your grandmother at the moment,’ Gregory said. ‘Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And before that?’

‘I was in a billet with some of the other girls at the station, near Camberwell.’

‘Do you miss them, the other girls?’

‘They call on me quite often.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They want to know when my convalescence is going to be up.’

‘Do they?’ He almost smiled. ‘Do you ever go out with them, the girls?’

‘For tea sometimes. They’ve asked me to go to a dance next week.’

‘That sounds like a good idea.’

‘Does it?’ Ivy wasn’t so sure.

Gregory studied her. ‘Do you like it at your grandmother’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘She raised you, didn’t she?’

‘She did.’

‘Are you comfortable talking about why?’

Ivy wasn’t, but, ‘My parents both died in the last war.’

‘That’s very sad.’

She wasn’t going to let him shake her, not with this. ‘It is,’ she said.

‘How did they die?’

‘My father was killed in Mesopotamia. My mother caught influenza just after I was born. She was an Australian VAD.’

‘She’s buried here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you visit her grave?’

Ivy did, often. Her gran used to take her every month as a child; together they’d show her drawings Ivy had done at school, tell her about trips they’d made to the seaside.

‘Ivy?’

‘Yes, I visit her grave.’

‘And your father’s? Have you ever been to see that?’

‘I’m not really sure why we’re talking about this.’

Gregory said nothing.

Ivy sighed. ‘We went once,’ she said. ‘We travelled out there.’ It was the only time Ivy had ever seen her gran cry. My boy, she’d said as they’d stood over the simple wooden cross marked CAPTAIN BEAU ALEXANDER HARCOURT, ROYAL LONDON GUARDS. 1898–1918. My boy. ‘There were so many graves there,’ said Ivy, ‘it was awful.’

‘Did you think of your parents, Ivy, when you were buried by that bomb?’

Ivy winced. So that was why they were talking about this. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Not at all?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What did you think about? You were down there for a very long time.’

Her eyes flicked to the window. The rain was really coming down. She didn’t have an umbrella.

‘Nine hours is a long time to be trapped beneath a building,’ Gregory said.

‘It is,’ said Ivy.

‘You don’t want to talk about it?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not really.’

‘I’m going to ask you to anyway.’

‘I had a feeling you might.’

‘Ivy, would you look at me?’

Slowly, dragging her gaze from the raindrops, she did as he asked. He peered from behind his spectacles. He had a blue kerchief in his blazer today.

‘You left your shift early,’ Gregory began. He didn’t check his notes. ‘It was just after ten in the evening.’ He sounded like he was reading the opening pages of a story. ‘You’d just heard Felix get shot down.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

‘You’d been sent home.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you were very upset.’

‘Of course I was upset.’

‘The All Clear had sounded?’

‘That’s right,’ she said.

‘It must have been very dark in the street.’

‘Yes.’

‘Describe it to me, Ivy.’

She adjusted her weight in the armchair. ‘It was cold,’ she said. ‘Foggy. I didn’t have my torch.’

‘So you couldn’t see.’

‘Not clearly.’ She’d stumbled, crab-like, against the building walls in the blackout. Had she been crying still? She couldn’t recall. Probably.

‘Where were you,’ Gregory asked, ‘when you heard the planes coming?’

‘About halfway to the Underground.’

‘You weren’t expecting them?’

‘No. They’d snuck back over.’

‘No siren?’

‘Not until after they started bombing.’

‘And they were bombing all around you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What was it like?’

She filled her cheeks with air and expelled it, remembering against her will: the blinding flashes, the cacophony and sudden heat of the flames; her terror as she ran through the fog.

‘You must have been beside yourself,’ Gregory said.

‘I couldn’t hear,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t see.’

‘You thought you were going to die?’

Ivy made a strange sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it felt likely.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was a man, he just appeared.’ Her voice caught at the mention of him. ‘I collided with him, nearly fell. Then, I don’t know.’ She closed her eyes, back there again. Why had Gregory forced her back there?

‘What happened next?’ he asked.

‘I woke up. I was on my front. My face was pressed right down on stone. When I raised my hands,’ she pulled them up a few inches to demonstrate, ‘I touched stone.’

‘Your ribs were broken, weren’t they?’

‘Yes. The man, he was called Stuart, he was on top of me. Everything was black.’ We find ourselves in a cocoon, Stuart had whispered. Now don’t move an inch, let’s not risk damaging it. ‘It never got light.’ Ivy shuddered, recalling the relentless dark. ‘No matter how hard I stared. It was just black.’

Gregory wrote something down.

‘This man, Stuart,’ he said, ‘tell me about him.’

‘He saved my life.’ Again Ivy’s voice broke.

‘How?’

‘He kept me calm, distracted me. He asked me so many questions, about,’ she drew a deep breath, ‘everything. He talked and talked, told me about his wife, his children. He stopped me breathing too fast and using all the air.’

‘He did that until you were rescued?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

Ivy met his gaze. ‘You know he didn’t.’

Gregory looked back, unflinching. Ivy checked the wall clock. She’d been there more than an hour. Surely it was time to go?

Gregory said, ‘How did you feel when you heard people coming to help you?’

‘I thought I might be dreaming.’

‘It took them a long time to get to you, didn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘They nearly gave up. And you were running out of air, so it was hard to shout.’

Ivy nodded.

‘Why didn’t they give up, Ivy?’

‘I scratched at the stones. A woman heard me.’

‘Stuart didn’t do anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Ivy swallowed. ‘You know why not.’

‘What had happened to him, Ivy?’

She stared at her lap. She could feel the weight of him on her back, his head pressed into her neck. ‘He’d died,’ she said. ‘He’d been bleeding.’

‘So you were trapped in a tiny hole, with a dead man on top of you. A man who saved your life. And you’d just heard someone you cared about deeply being shot down.’

The rain pattered the windowpanes. The wall clock ticked.

‘What a horrendous night that must have been, Ivy. What an awful, awful night.’

 

‘I want to talk about Felix,’ Gregory said on their fifth session. It was another rainy morning. Ivy’s woollen Wrens jacket gave off a damp odour in the warm office. Weak light seeped through the window. A small lamp glowed on the desk. ‘My old neighbour,’ Gregory said, ‘when I was growing up, she had a cat called Felix.’

‘A cat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’ Ivy wished the fire wasn’t on. ‘What kind of cat?’

‘A German cat, Ivy. My neighbour was German.’

She felt her stomach drop.

‘Felix wasn’t an RAF pilot, was he? Not like everyone thinks.’

She took a moment, gathering herself. ‘How did you guess?’

‘I had a hunch,’ he said, without any recrimination in his tone. ‘I asked a friend to get me the names of the British men shot shown that night. There were only two, and neither was called Felix.’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t tell anyone.’

‘I won’t.’

‘If the other girls found out. If my CO…’

‘They won’t. I never speak of anything we discuss here. But it must be very hard for you, to have kept this to yourself.’

She pulled at a loose thread on her blazer. ‘My gran knows.’

‘Was he a bomber pilot?’

She shook her head. ‘Fighter. He flew a Messerschmitt.’

‘How did the two of you meet?’

‘At Cambridge, in my first year. He was older than me, just a couple of years. He was working in London before the war started, he was a translator at the German Embassy, but he used to come back and visit.’

‘When did he go home to Germany?’

‘When war broke out. He didn’t want to.’

‘No?’

‘He hated the Nazis. His father was against Hitler. He disappeared, a few years ago now.’ She tugged at the thread, unravelling it. ‘Felix asked me to marry him,’ she said, surprised to find herself speaking unprompted for the first time. ‘He said if I married him, he’d be able to stay in England.’

‘But you said no.’

‘I didn’t love him, not any more.’ Ivy pulled the thread. ‘I had no idea what was coming, what this war would be like.’ She looked up at Gregory. ‘If I’d known what it was going to mean for him to go back, I would have helped him, made him safe.’

‘You couldn’t have known,’ Gregory said.

‘He wrote,’ Ivy said, the words falling from her. (Did this mean she was getting better? That she wouldn’t dream of Felix that night?) ‘Last summer. He sent a letter with a refugee, a Jewish man. He brought it to my grandmother’s.’

‘What did Felix say?’

‘That he was in hell. He didn’t believe he’d get through the war. He asked me to get word back to him, to tell him I still cared.’

‘And you didn’t?’

‘No,’ Ivy said. ‘I was too scared, I didn’t know what would happen to me if someone found out I was trying to get letters to Germany. I was a coward.’

‘Did you still care?’

‘Not enough. Not then.’

‘But you do now?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘When did you first hear him on the wireless transmitters?’

‘Almost as soon as I started at Camberwell. I recognised his voice. I always listened out for him. I didn’t want him to come to any harm.’

‘Of course you didn’t.’

‘He was kind,’ she said, ‘to the other pilots. The new boys especially. He told them to check their altitude, their oxygen levels. He said not to be nervous, that he was looking out for them.’

‘He sounds like a good man.’

‘He was.’ Ivy pressed her hands to her cheeks. She realised that she was crying. ‘He was in so much pain when he died. His engine was on fire.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Gregory leant forward and gave Ivy his kerchief, the same red one she’d spotted on her first day. ‘No one should ever have to hear that.’

‘No one should have to go through it.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘They shouldn’t.’

‘He didn’t deserve it,’ Ivy said. ‘I let him down.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘When I was trapped by the bomb after, it felt like a punishment.’

‘Yes,’ said Gregory, ‘I thought you might say that.’

 

‘My grandmother baked you shortbread,’ Ivy said on her ninth session, passing the tin to Gregory as he ushered her in.

‘I love shortbread,’ he said. ‘Please thank her for me.’

‘She’s glad I’m seeing you.’

‘She thinks you need it?’

‘She used most of her sugar ration on the shortbread, so yes, she thinks I do.’

They sat down. Gregory lit his pipe. ‘Did you try sleeping with the light off last night?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And?’

‘I fell asleep, but then I woke up.’

‘You had another nightmare?’

‘Yes.’

‘About being buried, or Felix?’

She hesitated. ‘Both,’ she admitted.

He made a note.

‘I switched the light back on,’ she said, ‘then the sirens started anyway so we had to go to the Anderson.’

‘How were you during the raid?’

‘Terrified,’ she said, wishing the answer could be different. ‘The bombs weren’t even that close, but the noise, the shelter, it all crushed in on me…’ Her skin turned clammy, just talking of it. ‘I couldn’t breathe, or really see.’

‘And when it stopped?’

‘When it stopped,’ she said, ‘I was down on the floor, and my gran was kneeling next to me. I can’t even remember getting down there.’

Gregory nodded slowly. ‘Thank you for trusting me with this,’ he said.

 

On Ivy’s twelfth appointment, Gregory suggested they go for a walk in the park opposite. It was a blustery day, cold with a thin mist. The lingering scent of cordite from the night’s raids filled the air. They bought cups of sweet tea from a kiosk. Ivy insisted on paying. She was warming to her doctor with his soft voice and kind looks. She blew onto her drink to cool it as they followed the path round the pond.

‘You’re more relaxed out here,’ observed Gregory.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I prefer to be in the open.’

‘When you find things difficult, if you’re in a closed space like the Anderson, or are panicking, take yourself to places like this. It might help.’

‘All right.’

They walked a little further. They passed a wooden bench. Gregory suggested they sit for a while.

‘I asked you yesterday,’ he said, ‘to go to that dance with the girls you worked with. Did you?’

‘I did.’

‘How was it?’

‘It was…’ She broke off. How to describe the endless journey on the tube, the walk through the blackout to the hall, the crash of the band, and the heat of all those bodies? ‘Bearable.’ She frowned at her steaming cup. ‘I used to love things like that.’

‘You wish you could again.’ It wasn’t a question.

Still, Ivy answered anyway. It was becoming so much easier to be honest, with him at least. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And did you dance? I expect you got lots of offers.’

‘One or two.’

‘And did you accept any of them?’

She looked sideways at him in the wintry morning. He studied her through his spectacles. His breath came in puffs of white.

‘You know what I’m going to say,’ she said.

‘So say it,’ he replied.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t accept any of them.’

‘Because of Felix?’

‘Yes.’

‘You think he would want you to sit on the edge of a dance floor for the rest of your life? That he’d really want you to be blaming yourself like this?’

She thought of the way he’d always used to hold onto her hand at parties in Cambridge, his worry that she’d find someone else after he went to work in London. The words in that last letter he’d sent. Tell me you can still love me, tell me and I’ll believe I can get through this.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I really think he would.’

 

‘What would you say if I told you that you had to go back to Camberwell?’

It was their fifteenth session.

‘I don’t want to go back to Camberwell,’ said Ivy.

‘But you do want to go back to work?’

‘Yes.’

Gregory placed his fingers in steeples beneath his nose. ‘Why?’

‘Because I want to move on.’

‘Fail,’ he said.

‘Fine.’ She looked to the ceiling, searching for the words. ‘I want to be me again, to work, to be normal. I’m tired of gardening, and knitting, and all the things my gran gets me to do to take my mind off things. I’m tired of being someone who needs to have their mind taken off things. I want to be me.’

His eyes narrowed, she had no idea whether in approval or disappointment.

‘You need to go back to Camberwell,’ he said.

‘What?’ She stared, aghast. ‘I —’

He held up the flats of his hands, silencing her. ‘Just one shift,’ he said. ‘I’ve been asked to send you in this afternoon. I don’t think it’s particularly wise, but apparently that’s irrelevant. There’s a pressing need for more listeners and someone at the Admiralty has decided they want to see how you’re progressing.’

‘Can’t they see how I’m progressing somewhere else?’ The question nearly choked her.

‘I’m afraid not. Go straight from here. I’ll see you tomorrow and we can talk about how it’s gone.’

She opened her mouth to protest again, but he spoke first. ‘You have to go, Ivy, I’m sorry. An order, however regretful, is an order.’

She sat and stared a moment longer, and then, since there really didn’t seem to be anything else for it, got slowly to her feet and, legs heavy with dread, left.

 

‘It was… all right,’ she said the next morning. ‘But please don’t make me go back there.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ She could have told him then about how panicked she’d felt as she walked to the bunker, past the rubble of the buildings that had collapsed on her. She could have described the way her hands had shaken when she’d pulled on her headset, the grief that had struck her as she adjusted her wireless dial and heard the voices of men and boys coming through. But she didn’t need to. She saw from the concern in his gaze that he already understood. ‘I did it,’ she said. ‘I proved I could. I could probably do it again if I really had to, but please don’t say that’s what you’re going to ask me to do.’

‘I’m not,’ said Gregory. He was behind his desk for once. There was no sign of Ivy’s file, just some official-looking papers before him. ‘You’re being transferred,’ he said.

‘I am?’ She sat back in her chair. ‘I’m fit?’ She’d expected it to feel different.

‘You’re not fit for anything, in my opinion. But yesterday was a test, and your CO decided you passed it. You’re needed abroad.’

‘Abroad?’ she echoed stupidly.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s your Japanese that’s done it.’

‘My Japanese?’ She seemed unable to keep herself from repeating everything he said.

‘Things are hotting up in the East.’ He removed his spectacles, rubbed his forehead. ‘I’d keep you signed off for another couple of months if I could. I want to keep seeing you until you go, teach you some coping strategies for your claustrophobia. The voyage, the cabins… I’m really not sure it’s a good idea.’

Nor, now Gregory mentioned it, was Ivy.

‘When am I going?’ she asked.

‘Next week.’

‘Where? Where in the East?’

‘You’re off to Singapore, Ivy. Now what do you think about that?’

Until her granddaughter returned home that afternoon, much later than usual, and broke her news, Mae hadn’t thought about the island she’d escaped from almost forty-three years before for a very long time. It had been a hard-won forgetfulness; for so long after that night that she’d run, she’d thought of Singapore often: whenever her son Beau had smiled and looked like his father, or she’d heard the wheeze of crickets on a high summer night, she’d found herself dragged back to that tropical place of heat and spices with crippling speed. She didn’t know exactly when it had stopped happening. But, as Beau had grown up, and automobiles had replaced carriages, slowly the memories had retreated, softened. They’d become so distant that, now, aged sixty-four, it was like being struck to hear the name of that place again in her kitchen.

‘Where did you just say?’ she asked Ivy, needing to have it repeated.

‘Singapore.’

Singapore. 

She stared across at her granddaughter, unable to move. She’d been in the middle of preparing a rabbit stew; she held the knife aloft, an onion half chopped beneath her. Ivy, too caught up in events, didn’t notice her shock. She seemed to be in a similar state herself: her cream skin was tinged with feverish colour; there was a charged energy to her that hadn’t been there in weeks. She removed her jacket, her cap, both dusted with raindrops, as was her black hair, and hung them on the hook. With her back safely turned, Mae placed her hand, the one not holding the knife, to her chest, steadying her breath. Ivy talked on, saying that she had a berth eastwards in six days’ time. ‘I didn’t know what to say when Gregory told me,’ she said, ‘but now,’ her forehead creased, ‘I don’t know. It feels like it could be a new start.’ She’d left the garden door ajar; it was letting all the cold air in and the light out.

‘Ivy,’ Mae heard herself saying, ‘shut the door, sweetheart.’

Ivy looked over her shoulder as though surprised, then did as Mae asked.

Mae raised her forearm and wiped her eyes, which were streaming from the onions. She was still holding the knife. She couldn’t make sense of what was happening. How was it happening? She felt hunted. She’d believed herself so safe. She wanted to tell Ivy not to go, to beg her to stay, but she didn’t know how to do it without giving herself away.

She set the knife down. It clinked on the chopping board and Ivy looked at it, then at Mae. For the first time, she appeared to register Mae’s unease. Her expression softened. ‘Gran,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to worry about me.’ She was always saying that, so determined to be believed fine. ‘Besides, it’s much safer in Singapore. There’s no war there.’

‘Not yet,’ said Mae numbly.

‘There won’t be any bombs,’ said Ivy. Mae couldn’t tell who she was working harder to reassure. ‘And Gregory says I’ll be listening to shipmen, not pilots.’

‘It’s too far,’ said Mae, realising as she spoke how true it was. ‘You’re not ready.’ Another truth. Ivy might have got better at brave-facing things lately, dragging herself off to that dance, then to her shift back in Camberwell, but it didn’t mean she was mended. Mae placed her fingertips to her head, slowly absorbing the full enormity of what was unfolding: Ivy was leaving, in less than a week, for a place thousands of miles away. Now that the first blow of shock was passing, she realised what madness the plan was. Even if Ivy had been posted somewhere other than Singapore – Ceylon, Malaya, Bombay – she’d have wanted to stop it. Ivy had only just started being able to travel on the Underground again for heaven’s sake, how could anyone think of sending her to the other side of the world?

She asked Ivy as much.

And Ivy said she didn’t know, but she was going to have to manage. She assured Mae that she could manage. Really she could.

Mae dropped down into her seat with a thud. ‘I promised your mother,’ she said, ‘when you were just a day old, that I’d look after you. It was the last thing she asked of me.’

‘I need to start looking after myself again.’

‘I’m scared for you.’

‘I’m scared too,’ said Ivy, ‘but I’m scared all the time. I don’t know how I let that become who I was.’

‘Oh, Ivy…’

‘I’ve been thinking about it all the way home. There’s too much here in London to remind me. Just now, in the street, I was petrified of a raid coming. Every time I walk past a bomb site, I smell the dust and I want to run.’ She widened her eyes, entreating Mae to understand. ‘I’m so tired of being frightened. And if I stay here, I think I’ll spend the rest of the war getting more afraid, not less.’

Mae looked across at her, noticing, as she so often did, how exhausted she’d become; her beautiful face was pinched with anxiety, there were shadows of sleeplessness beneath her eyes. She’d lost so much weight in the past few weeks. Her uniform hung from her. And how long had it been since she’d laughed, really laughed? Mae couldn’t remember, and it broke her heart.

‘You keep telling me,’ said Ivy, ‘that I need to put everything behind me. That I deserve it.’

‘You do, sweetheart. I just wish you’d believe it.’

‘Well, what if this is my chance to start again? To go somewhere I won’t remember all the time.’

‘You think you can forget Felix?’ Mae asked dubiously.

Ivy hesitated. ‘I think maybe I can try and forget the bomb.’

It would be a start. Mae sighed, feeling herself being won over against her will. ‘Do you want to go to Singapore?’ she asked weakly. Somehow, she managed not to flinch on the word.

Ivy raised her shoulders as though she didn’t know what she wanted. ‘I only know I can’t stay here.’

Mae ran her hand over her face. ‘Oh, Ivy,’ she said again, ‘I wasn’t expecting this.’

 

Somehow, without Mae fully accepting anything, they moved on from the discussion of whether Ivy was going to go, to the things she had to get done before she left: the vaccinations, the tutorials to refresh her Japanese, a trip to the outfitters to collect her tropical kit. They had supper, listened to the evening news on the wireless, and for once Ivy, curled in the armchair by the fire, ate all her pudding; it was as though with all the talking, she forgot not to be hungry. By an effort of will, Mae kept her expression neutral whenever Singapore was mentioned. She didn’t let her shock surface again.

She was relieved though when Ivy went to bed early. She waited until she heard her tread in the room above, and then closed her eyes and sagged back in her chair. Her muscles ached with the long effort of containing her emotion.

For once, there was no raid. She stayed by the dwindling fire, listening for it, but even when it was clear it wasn’t going to come, she couldn’t bring herself to go to bed. She wasn’t going to be able to sleep.

Instead, she climbed the creaking stairs and went to the door of Ivy’s room, peering in at her sleeping granddaughter. Her breathing was steady; for now, she wasn’t having a nightmare. One would come. One always did. Mae rested her head against the doorframe and let her gaze drift across the room: over Ivy’s clothes draped on the dressing-table chair, the books on the window-seat, and the white-painted trunk in the corner, full of the little girls’ annuals and long-abandoned toys that Mae hadn’t the heart to throw out. There was an identical trunk in the attic, packed with Ivy’s father’s things: Mae’s own precious boy. It had been his room once. When he was two, she’d painted the walls with animal pictures; together they’d filled the shelves with wooden blocks and toy soldiers. She could picture him as clear as if he were still there before her: chubby legs crossed on the floor, tongue pressed between his teeth as he waged battle with figurines. She could feel the warmth of his cheek against hers as she scooped him up to kiss him. She could hear his giggles. Come on, Mama, come and play. It’s more fun with both of us. She closed her eyes in pain. It never got easier.

And it seemed too hard, too awful, that, barely two decades after she’d been forced to watch her son leave for war, she should be having to let his daughter go too.

For the umpteenth time, she wondered how she might stop it. She could talk to Doctor Gregory, appeal to the Navy… Then, just as quickly, she remembered Ivy’s words. What if this is my chance to start again? She recalled the desperation in her tone, and knew she couldn’t stand in her way.

Could she?

No, no, she couldn’t.

She was going to have to let her go.

Surely no harm would come of it. Ivy was right: it really was safer out East. For the moment at least. And there couldn’t be anyone left there who’d remember. Not so many years on.

There couldn’t.

Who could possibly be left?

 

In the days that followed, the question plagued her. Even as she waved Ivy off to her various appointments, a determined smile on her face, the long-buried names of people she’d known on the island repeated in her mind: Sally, David, Laurie… Their faces spiralled up before her, waiting in her subconscious all this time. She tried to tell herself again that they would be long gone; dead, perhaps, or living elsewhere. Retired. Ivy’s path wouldn’t cross with any of theirs. Of course it wouldn’t. She worked so very hard to convince herself of the fact.

Strange how she always fell just short of believing it.

‘You’re still worrying,’ Ivy said as she kissed her goodbye one frosty morning. She kept her tone light, but her blue eyes were full of concern. ‘I can tell.’

Mae hated that she was giving her something else to fret about. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, squeezing her hand. ‘I’m going to miss you, that’s all.’

‘I feel like there’s something else you’re not saying…’

‘No,’ said Mae, forcing her voice level. ‘No.’

Ivy’s gaze narrowed. It was obvious she was deciding whether to push her.

Mae reached up to straighten her already straight collar, and summoned one of her smiles. ‘You need to get on,’ she said, swallowing the words to beg her to stay. What if this is my chance to start again? ‘You’ll be late for your inoculations.’

Ivy hesitated a moment more, but then, to Mae’s relief, nodded and went.

Later, when she returned home, laughing about a lieutenant who’d leapt away every time the nurse came near him with a needle, Mae felt sure she’d done the right thing in biting her tongue before. And although she suspected Ivy’s good humour was forced – for both of their sakes – she laughed too. It would have felt like letting Ivy down to do anything else.

Looking to be reassured on one level at least, she began scouring the papers, searching for confirmation that Singapore was expected to remain as safe as she needed to believe it would. The columns though were dominated by fighting in the Mediterranean a. . .