Sophie Hamilton paced the steps of the Imperial War Museum and glared at her phone again. Already twenty minutes late, Matt hadn’t even bothered to return her texts. Acknowledging the time, she sighed deeply and, unable to wait any longer, knew she would have to go in without him.
Rushing through the glass doors because she was late, Sophie’s feet echoed across the white marble foyer and she cursed herself for wearing stilettos, particularly this new pair that were chafing the back of her heels. Racing towards the lift, she barely had time to notice the splendid exhibition of military history all around her, only briefly glancing at the V2 rocket that dominated the hallway and the Spitfire, with its polished silver propeller glinting under its spotlight as it dangled from the windowed ceiling above her head. She hustled because she knew Jonathan, her supervisor, was probably having a panic attack about now and she pictured him anxiously pacing the exhibition halls upstairs as he waited for her.
Arriving at the lift, Sophie wedged her hand in the door just in time to stop it closing. The only other occupant, a young man staring at his phone, pretended not to see her as she panted inside.
Getting the first glance at herself as the lift door slid into place, Sophie felt even more frustration building towards her boyfriend as she tried desperately to comb her hand through the blonde bobbed hairstyle she’d had cut and blow-dried for the occasion. But even in the hazy reflection of the door she could see that it was now lank and stringy because she’d spent nearly twenty minutes outside in the drizzle.
Drawing in a deep breath, Sophie attempted to calm herself. She wasn’t going to let Matt spoil this for her. She’d been looking forward to it all week.
The lift door opened on the next floor and a mother and child entered. The scrubbed, pink-cheeked girl, with red-ribboned pigtails that bounced with a life of their own, squeezed her mother’s hand with excited anticipation. Sophie caught her breath and quickly averted her gaze to the floor, the sight of this happy family picture still too raw and painful for her to even observe.
As the lift climbed again, Sophie dragged her thoughts back from the heartache she’d been through in the last year and instead focused on how relieved she’d been to get this job, how she’d needed it for her sanity.
Taking six months off from the intensity of her legal career had been her grandmother’s idea.
‘You just need a break, Sophie. Give yourself the chance to catch your breath,’ she’d stated, stroking her granddaughter’s hair.
Gran, of course, had been right. Being a high-flying corporate solicitor had definitely had its perks, but one of them hadn’t been having time to grieve her personal loss. And when she had been found by her secretary sobbing at her desk one morning four months after losing Emily and her mother, it had been a relief to let go and accept that she couldn’t just go on as normal.
At first, she had told herself it would just be a sabbatical, but as time had gone on it had been harder and harder to even contemplate going back to that hectic pace of life. For now, she was working part-time for a small charity that specialised in archiving historical materials. Sophie had always loved visiting old houses. Her job was to categorise all the treasures that went back centuries, some from houses that the charity had been working in for years. There were no time pressures and no client counting on her to be at her best. And even though she didn’t know what the future held, this job was perfect for her, right now.
The lift door slid open and, carefully, without looking in her direction, Sophie sidestepped the young girl even as the presence of her once again tugged at her heartstrings. Swallowing down her pain Sophie moved at a clip towards the event.
The museum had created an atmospheric experience to support the exhibition and as she raced toward it the sounds of London during the Blitz stretched out down the hallway to greet her. The high-pitched screech of air-raid sirens followed by the ominous rolling thunder of bombs dropping on London boomed from the wall speakers. Interspersed with the sinister sounds of war were the best of Winston Churchill’s speeches and an uplifting recording of Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’, supplied by the BBC Home Service. With this evocative backdrop, plus the dim lighting and retro signage, Sophie felt as if she was stepping straight back into the 1940s.
As her eyes adjusted, she marvelled that this new exhibition had been possible at all and was excited to finally see the photos that the museum had asked Jonathan to provide as part of it, and which he had gushed about, blown up to life size.
All at once her boss was in front of her.
‘There you are, Sophie,’ declared Jonathan, unable to hide the desperation in his tone as he strode towards her. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He glanced at his wristwatch.
‘I’m so sorry. Matt said he’d meet me here, and I was waiting for him.’
He shook his head, barely acknowledging what she was saying, the worry furrowing his brow. ‘We really need to get going,’ he continued, anxiously. ‘I am expecting the mayor at any moment. Do you have my notes?’
‘I sent them to you yesterday,’ responded Sophie.
Her boss was often scatty and was endlessly losing things, and he stared at her with a look of abject panic.
She had backed up the notes on her phone just in case. ‘I have a copy.’
Jonathan teased out the breath he was holding. ‘Thank goodness,’ he spluttered. Glancing over her shoulder, he noticed the arrival of the mayor’s party and rushed off to greet them.
The event started on time and Jonathan delivered his speech perfectly, reading it from Sophie’s phone. In it he gave the crowd a flavour of London during the 1940s, and described to them how the photos had been found when the charity had been moving an ancient desk to be sold at Sotheby’s. The negatives of the photographs now being displayed in the museum had been in an envelope with the date March 1944 scribbled on the front. They had somehow slid down behind a drawer and wedged themselves at the back of the desk.
Sophie listened to Jonathan and wondered what it would have been like to be alive during that time and how brave people had to have been. Sophie didn’t feel brave. She didn’t think she would have been able to survive through all that trauma.
What a miracle it had been that the negatives had not only been found but had been in such good condition after so many decades. Once it was obvious the photos could be saved, Sophie’s job had been to research the history of them. Relying on her legal background of piecing together evidence, she had established that during wartime, the photographer Karen Johnson had been a family friend of the lord of Hawthorne Manor, the latest home Jonathan and Sophie had been working on. In the 1940s, a London newspaper had commissioned Karen to take pictures of the ever-changing city and to capture the tenacious spirit of the people of the capital, determined to rebuild at any cost, especially from the damage done from the relentless bombing campaign of the Blitz in 1940–41, when London had been bombed for fifty-six out of fifty-seven days. Although many photos of the devastation of London had been taken during the war, Sophie knew these would be something special – captured as they were through the lens of one of the most prominent photographers of that period.
Karen Johnson’s untimely death in March 1944 caused Sophie to speculate that she had been staying at the manor with her friends at the time and the envelope had been with her belongings, then somehow, in the grief of her death, been misplaced.
After Jonathan’s flawless speech, much to Sophie’s relief, she then accompanied the group of World War Two enthusiasts as they toured the gallery, listening to him talk about the significance of each piece and how the reconstruction of London had been so intensive.
Congratulating their charity on the work that had not only uncovered the photographs, but also the treasure trove of World War Two artefacts on display, the mayor left just as Jonathan’s partner, Grant, arrived, and Sophie knew he would be able to take over babysitting her boss so she could grab a glass of champagne and relax a little.
Deciding to excuse herself from the group, just as Grant and Jonathan started enthusing about their new puppy, Sophie started to look around the gallery on her own. As she studied each photo in more detail, her thoughts returned to her relationship with Matt. It wasn’t just that he was busy, or even that it felt like they’d hardly seen each other in the last few months. Something was nagging at her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that was more than just their mutual grief.
Sophie sipped her champagne as she scanned the photograph of the bombing of the Woolworth Building in 1942 and its reconstruction. It had been taken by Karen earlier than the rest of the collection, but borrowed to add more content. Sophie tried to imagine what it’d be like to be part of such a horror, and to come back to work the next day and find you no longer had a job or a place of work. She drifted to the next print. A group of women were bent over wearing headscarves and trousers, smiling with that British ‘can do’ attitude as they removed rubble from what would’ve been somebody’s home. The next picture was of the Baker Street bombing. It revealed the randomness of the bombing patterns. In the photo, two buildings stand, almost unscathed, either side of an empty space where another has been completely demolished. On the pile of rubble sat a young boy who was the focus of the photograph. He was dirty-faced, in a grey school uniform and sweater, holding a tattered Union Jack.
As Sophie studied the image, something caught her eye, someone a little out of focus and off to the side she hadn’t noticed the first time she’d seen the photograph, when it was so much smaller. She drew closer and realised that what had caught her attention for a second had been a thought that a woman she could see in the photo was her mother. All at once, the weight of grief slammed into her again, starting in the pit of her stomach, searing up her body until it culminated in her throat, coming out as a strangled gasp.
Sophie hated how her loss and pain did this to her every time. She knew she would feel gutted, utterly devastated, after the tragedy, but she hadn’t been prepared for the waves of sorrow that could appear for months afterwards and literally threaten to take her legs from under her. As Sophie stared at the picture, she shook the thought from her mind, recognising how ridiculous it had been. The woman in this picture couldn’t possibly be her mother. This photograph had been taken during the war, more than a decade before her mother was even born. It was just one of those odd phenomena that happen when someone dies and in your desperation to claw them back from death you project them everywhere. Someone with the same haircut across the room makes your heart skip a beat, or a person crossing the street with the same stride stops you in your tracks and, for one tiny moment, your heart leaps with the connection. For that one sliver of a second you think there’s been a mistake and that the person you miss more than life itself is still alive. Then the cruel pain and weight of your mistake brings back the anguish in such a staggering way it threatens to engulf you and it is as if it all just happened yesterday.
Catching her breath, Sophie drew closer to the picture. It wasn’t just projection. It was uncanny. The woman’s stance, height and trim figure, with the elegant swan neck, was so familiar to her. Her head was turned to the side so that Sophie couldn’t see her face, just her head in profile, but this person could, very easily, be a member of her family.
Then something else struck her. The woman was wearing a tight A-line skirt and a jumper that Sophie could see under her unbuttoned coat, and on the lapel of the jacket was a piece of jewellery that also felt familiar to her. It looked a lot like her family crest. Sophie had always thought the brooch an ugly thing, with a stag’s head and gangly antlers. But it was very distinguishable and this was a very similar, if not the same, piece she had seen many times on her great-grandmother’s lapel in photographs.
Sophie looked at the woman again, the way her chin was cocked to one side, just as her mother would do when she would ask a question. Was it possible it could be her great-aunt Caroline? Sophie took stock of the Hamilton females. On her grandfather’s side, there had been three children alive during the war. Her great-uncle Tom, her great-aunt Caroline and her grandfather, John. The boys had been young but Auntie Caroline had been in her mid-twenties during the war, so this could be her. Sophie’s grandmother and John’s wife, Bessy, would know for sure. Maybe she should call her and ask. How excited would she be to know there was a photograph of her late sister-in-law in the museum?
All at once, someone grabbed Sophie from behind and she jumped, so lost in her thoughts. She spun around, and Matt was in front of her, grinning. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many exhibitions I’ve been in,’ he spluttered, out of breath. ‘So sorry I’m late, Soph. Did I miss anything exciting? Did Jonathan make it through the speech without you holding his hand?’
He was being light and playful, which was his way of avoiding the fact that he was over an hour late. Sophie didn’t respond to his lively banter, hoping her coolness would alert him to the fact she was angry.
He noticed the chill straight away. ‘I’m sorry, Soph, seriously I am,’ he continued. ‘Don’t be angry with me. You wouldn’t believe how busy it’s been at work. The US exchange dropped like a stone this afternoon, and everyone in the office was panicking. You know how we are affected with Brexit and all these international concerns.’
‘I imagine that for some reason the problems with the stock market meant that somehow your fingers were unable to text me, then?’ The hurt was evident behind her tone, but her response colder than she’d wanted to sound.
He held up his phone. ‘Battery’s dead,’ he stated, sounding sheepish. ‘I meant to charge it before I left the house this morning and I completely forgot. It ran out about three hours ago and I haven’t got my charger with me, so I’ve been winging it, which is why I couldn’t find you in here. Though, I have to tell you, there’s a wonderful exhibition about Anne Frank down the hall that I think you’d love.’
She shook her head. This pattern was becoming familiar to her. When they had first got together, he’d always been so dependable, almost too dependable, wanting to see her as much as possible; now he was always late, with some excuse for why he couldn’t make it on time. Sophie was in her late thirties and Matt hadn’t been her first relationship, but she had been very focused on her career up until they’d met, and their shared desire for success had made it a very companionable one. But everything had changed for them when she had unexpectedly become pregnant with Emily. She had been surprised but overjoyed, Matt had been shocked at first. But his precious daughter had won him over from the very moment he had held her in his arms and her tiny hand had hooked itself around his little finger.
She looked over at Matt, trying to read him as he continued to accompany her around the gallery, asking her questions about the pictures, but seeming distracted.
Before she left the museum, Sophie returned to the photo that had intrigued her so much and took a quick picture of the woman in it. She wondered if her grandmother would recognise her.
Making her way out into the damp streets that were now aglow with blue twilight, she walked beside Matt in silence.
‘Would you like to get some dinner?’ she asked, just to make conversation.
He grimaced. ‘You know, normally I would, Soph. I really do need to get back to work.’
‘In the evening? Aren’t most of the markets closed now?’
‘Yeah, they are, but I do need to check in on a few things. I ran out and left them all in the middle of something. Let’s have a rain check on that.’
He kissed her on the cheek as he hailed a taxi. Sophie sighed. Maybe her gran would be up for a visit after all. She called her and heard the familiar voice of the sweetest woman in the world.
‘Hey, Gran, it’s me. I was wondering if you were up for a visit?’
Bessy sounded delighted at the idea, and Sophie hung up and made her way to the Tube. It was about thirty minutes from the Imperial War Museum to Hackney, where her gran lived, which gave her plenty of time to contemplate how remarkable this photo was as she stared at it on her phone. Once again, Sophie felt the familiar waves of nostalgia and grief wash over her. If it hadn’t been the 1940s it could be a photo of her mother, Alice, or maybe even a future picture of her daughter, if Emily’d had the chance to live longer.
Arriving at Bessy’s comfortable apartment in Hackney, Sophie was once again amazed to see how the area had evolved over the last few years. Once a little run-down and known for its violence and crime, the East End was undoubtedly making its way up in the world.
‘Hello, love.’ Her gran’s beaming face greeted her at the door, and the smell of something wonderful cooking embraced her as she stepped inside. Her grandmother hugged her as tightly as she always did until Sophie had to remind her she couldn’t breathe. Bessy chuckled. ‘It’s because you’re so skinny. If you weren’t so thin, you’d be capable of being hugged.’ She shuffled down the hall as she continued to chat to Sophie over her shoulder. ‘No man wants a woman too skinny.’
‘I already have a boyfriend, Gran. Matt, remember?’ Sophie responded defensively.
Her gran eyed her questioningly as she entered the kitchen. ‘Isn’t it about time you two settled down?’
This was a conversation she frequently had with her grandmother in one form or another. A woman who’d been married just after her eighteenth birthday found it hard to understand why her granddaughter was still unwed, especially considering Sophie and Matt had had a child together.
Sophie hastily changed the subject. ‘Something smells amazing.’
Gran nodded, moving to the stove and retrieving her oven gloves. ‘I’ve got a bit of dinner warming for you, in case you were hungry.’
‘Oh, I’m fine, Gran, you shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.’ Sophie was about to continue to protest when the older woman put her hand in the air, signifying the conversation was over and Sophie would be eating a plate of shepherd’s pie, the source of the delectable aroma that permeated the whole kitchen, whether she liked it or not.
Sophie made her way to the table and into one of her gran’s 1970s’ chrome and yellow faux-leather dining chairs, which featured in so many great memories from growing up. It felt like her heart sighed with a feeling of being home. Sophie had often visited the estate in Cornwall that her extended family still owned. But, much to the chagrin of her grandfather’s family, when he had died, her grandma had moved back to the place she grew up, and Sophie’s mum, a single mother, had come back too, bringing Sophie with her.
‘Hackney’s my home, love,’ Bessy would declare to her granddaughter. ‘Cornwall’s charming, and it was your grandfather’s home, but this is where my friends are.’
Sophie’s great-uncle Tom now lived in the manor in Cornwall, along with his family.
‘It wasn’t really my cup of tea,’ Bessy would say when Sophie asked her about her move from the West Country.
Bessy placed in front of Sophie a plate of steaming creamy mashed potato, browned under the grill, that covered minced lamb with onions and vegetables, then bustled off to her cooker to put the kettle on.
‘Always good to see you, Sophie,’ her gran continued in a singsong way.
Pudding, Gran’s rather large tabby cat, hopped up onto Sophie’s lap and kneaded her thigh as Sophie considered Gran’s words. She wished she came to see her more often. She loved it. But the sadness of the last year had crippled her; it had taken all of her focus just to dress and get to work in the morning.
‘Well, obviously I wanted to see you. But I also have a mystery I’m hoping you can help me solve,’ Sophie stated, unable to resist heaping a large forkful of the delicious shepherd’s pie into her mouth, suddenly feeling ravenous.
‘A mystery?’ Gran said, raising her eyebrows under her permed blonde hair.
‘I have a photograph I need to show you.’
Her grandmother retrieved her reading glasses and settled on a chair at the table next to Sophie to look at her phone. She peered at it. ‘How am I supposed to be able to see that?’ she asked. ‘It’s tiny.’
Sophie laughed and pinched and stretched the image on the screen to enlarge the picture for her grandmother to see.
‘Well, that’s fancy,’ Bessy chuckled, as if Sophie had just performed magic. She stared at the photograph in her granddaughter’s hand as Sophie explained the museum exhibition.
‘The photographer took this shot in Baker Street during World War Two. But look at this woman coming out of the building next door to the rubble, Gran.’
Bessy drew her chair in, and lifted the phone even closer to her eyes. ‘Why, that’s uncanny,’ she mumbled. ‘It looks like one of the Hamiltons, doesn’t it?’
‘I know, I thought the same,’ Sophie responded. ‘And look at the brooch.’
Her grandmother stared again at the phone. ‘Well, blow me down. If that isn’t that awful ugly thing that’s the Hamilton coat of arms.’ She shook her head. ‘I detested that brooch. Your grandfather tried to give it to me. I respectfully refused. This is a mystery though, you’re right. Your great-grandfather had business interests in London, but the whole family was down in Cornwall, particularly during the bombings. Nobody wanted to be in London. All of them evacuated down there. What year was this taken, love?’
‘It was a picture of the bomb destruction taken in early forty-four.’
‘Oh, well, that narrows it down. It can’t have been your great-aunt Caroline. She moved to Canada in 1943, and I always remember because John says she left just before his seventh birthday. That means—’ She stopped and sucked in a breath. ‘It can only be one person…’ Her voice petered out to a whisper.
Sophie waited, but there was a long pause where her gran appeared thoughtful. Then she stood up abruptly, responding to the whistling kettle, saying offhand, ‘Let’s see about that cup of tea, then.’
‘Gran?’
‘I think you should leave things in the past, love. I mean, this looks a little like one of the Hamiltons and it could be similar jewellery, but I don’t think it’s anything more.’
Bessy poured hot water into the teapot and brought it back to the table, then moved to get her biscuit barrel, placing chocolate biscuits on a plate and putting them in front of Sophie.
‘Tuck in, love. We won’t get any meat on those hips unless you eat something.’
‘Gran, why are you avoiding the conversation? Who is this?’
Her grandmother took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and blew out a long, slow breath. Then, after a long pause, continued in a serious tone, staring at a spot on the table. ‘It’s a family story nobody ever talked about, dear. If it’s not your great-aunt Caroline, it could only be one other person, Villainous Vivienne.’
‘Villainous Vivienne?’ Sophie echoed, her eyes growing wide, a smile creeping across her face. ‘She sounds like a criminal in a 1930s’ detective novel. Who the heck is Villainous Vivienne?’
‘That was the nickname the locals gave her, love. She was your grandfather’s other sister.’
‘Grandad had another sister as well as Caroline? Nobody has ever even mentioned another sister.’
‘We all tried to forget the stories about Vivienne. It was an extremely painful time, that should have been left behind in the past. No one wanted to talk about it.’
Savouring the tea that her grandma had poured for her, she said, ‘You’re going to have to finish the story, Gran. Why was she villainous?’
‘It was harrowing in those years after the war,’ continued Bessy, staring out of the window as though she were lost in some distant memory. ‘Your grandad talked about it a bit when I met him. The whole family was scarred by what she did. I never met her and I can only tell you of what I know. I have a letter that I could look for that may help piece together more of the story, but the upshot of it is that, yes, there was another sister. She was reckless, not like the rest of them. At the beginning of the war, she ran away from home and somehow ended up out in France, though no one knew what she was doing for certain – giving away all the British secrets and sleeping with Nazis for all they knew. Your grandad told me she was always a bad ’un. Impulsive, you know, thought she could take on the world. After a few months in France she arrived back home overnight with her tail between her legs, and it was rumoured she did something terrible over there, a mistake that cost people their lives. But she wouldn’t talk about it. Your grandad always believed the Nazis corrupted her during that time.’
Sophie sat back. This sounded like a movie. ‘What do you mean, corrupted?’
‘When she got back in 1943 she worked as a nurse on the family estate in Cornwall. As you know, it became a hospital during the war.’
Sophie nodded. She’d heard many stories about the time that the entire manor had been converted into a hospital. Her grandfather and great-uncle Tom had lived there during that time.
Bessy continued, ‘Because she spoke German, Vivienne ended up taking care of a Nazi POW who came down in a plane. Very little was known about him. Not only did she fall in love with him, but she also helped him escape back to Germany to do his work for Hitler. Vivienne converted to Nazism and joined the party. It was an extremely sordid tale, and it practically killed your great-grandfather. He was heartbroken that his daughter had done such a despicable thing. And no one really understood why. She had a beautiful life, everything ahead of her. Why would she do such an abominable thing as to betray her country?
‘After she left, the family suffered terribly, and after the war, they were stigmatised. It took decades for people to cease talking about it. I suppose she didn’t think about that when she changed sides and ran off with a Nazi. How it would affect the family. It was a dreadful time, your grandad said. He still felt fearful about sending our children, your mum, to school. . . .
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