Chapter 69

Mab nearly didn’t make it to the Grand Hotel in time to catch Osla before she headed for Clockwell. She was packing her traveling case when the front door banged downstairs; there was the usual clamor from Eddie and Lucy, and then Mab’s husband came into the bedroom. He was smiling at the twins, who were hanging off him like monkeys, but his jaw tightened as he looked at Mab.

Not another quarrel, she thought. I do not have time!

His eyes stopped on her traveling case. “Going somewhere? ” he asked in the Australian drawl that persisted even after five years in England.

“An impromptu hen weekend with old friends, ” Mab said brightly. “Don’t look so downcast, Mike. You’ll have the nursemaid to help with the babies. ”

His voice was level. “I was hoping we could finish last night’s conversation. ”

“I don’t remember, ” she lied. “I was very tired. ”

“Not too tired to climb on me rather than finish the discussion. Which is usually how you get out of any conversation you don’t want to have with me. ”

“I’d have thought you’d be happy to have a wife who doesn’t get headaches at bedtime. ” Mab slammed her traveling case shut. “I’ve left a sausage and tomato pie for supper, and a syrup tart for pudding—”

“Stop, Mab. ”

“There’s leftover casserole if—”

“I don’t care about supper. Talk to me. ”

She looked at her husband, standing there in his shirtsleeves, capably juggling little Lucy in his arms as Eddie clung to his trouser leg. Mike was so good with babies—something she hadn’t anticipated when she chose him. It had been in the giddy week after V-E Day; all London was celebrating, and Mab had been sorting boxes of naval decrypts at the Admiralty when one of the secretaries came in with her baby on her hip, saying that her mum was sick, asking if she could keep him on shift this once. “Hold him, Mab. . . ” And Mab had stretched out her arms in an utter trance. She was still sleepwalking through her days and enduring her nights filled with bad dreams, just as she had been since Coventry. But in the mad furor following Germany’s surrender, when all Britain was finally asking the question “What now?, ” Mab asked it too as she looked at the little boy gurgling in her arms, and the answer came with a desire that bordered on violence: I want a baby.

So she had put away her black wool for wine-red silk that swished around her legs like sin incarnate and set out to net a second husband. A very different hunt than her first—as the widowed Mrs. Gray, she already had a bank account and a home; all she needed in a second husband was kindness, a wish for children, and as little resemblance to Francis Gray as possible. Enter Lieutenant Mike Sharpe, six and a half feet of suntanned former RAF pilot who had jostled her in the crush at the Savoy one night and said in an Australian lilt, “Hello, gorgeous. ”

You’ll do, Mab had thought more or less on the spot.

“I want to hang up my wings somewhere foggy and cool, never go back to ruddy Canberra, and go back to engineering, ” Mike had said when she asked what he was going to do now that the war was over. That was all the confirmation she needed; Mab fell into bed with him the same night and they were married within a week. The war was over and everyone was falling in love, and Mike had been no exception. He’d been in love, and Mab had been in love with the idea of satin-cheeked babies with those blue, blue eyes.

The eyes now looking back at her from both her children.

“You never talk to me unless it’s the weather or the kids or what’s for supper, ” Mike said now. “I never have the faintest goddamned idea what’s going on in that head of yours. And if I dare to ask, you either start talking about Eddie and Lucy, or you climb in my lap and screw my brains out—”

“Don’t be obscene, ” she said coldly.

“—to stop me from ever, even by accident, getting to know you better. And it’s a pretty good tactic, strategically speaking, but it’s wearing a little thin. ” He paused, visibly holding on to his temper. Mike usually made for a very calm husband, not in an opaque way like Francis, who had been like a well to the center of the earth, but in what Mab had learned was a very Australian way: endlessly laconic, but once that relaxed ease gave way to anger, it came on like a shark moving through deep water. “I know you had a bad war, but you’re still frozen there. And I’m bloody tired of sitting back and hoping you’ll defrost. ”

Mab averted her eyes, feeling like a coward. “You don’t understand—”

“You never give me the chance to. ”

Fair, Mab thought. The day she recited her wedding vows for the second time, she had been pierced by a huge irrational terror that if she let this man into herself the way she’d let Francis in, the world would smash her into pieces all over again. It was inviting trouble, opening your heart that way. She couldn’t do it. She refused to do it. And there wasn’t any reason to do it, because as far as Mab could see, most men weren’t like Francis; they didn’t expect soul-searing intimacy with their wives. They expected to bump along together, a husband in his sphere and a wife in hers, amiable, contented. So she’d locked Francis and the woman she’d been with him away in a vault—and for the most part, she’d assumed everything with Mike was fine.

But recently, these little quarrels had started flaring.

“I’m sorry you find me so disappointing. ” Her voice was stiff as she heaved the traveling case off the bed. “Considering that I don’t nag, I’m not extravagant, I keep a good house, and I gave you two beautiful children—”

“Yes, yes, you’re a good wife. You tick it off like you’re checking a list. Good meals, tidy house, loving mother, check, check, check—”

“What’s wrong with that? ” she fired back. She was proud of being a good wife, damn it. If you married a good man like Mike, he deserved full value for what he was giving. Mab knew she gave good value. He had no reason to complain, none.

“I’d like to know if you love me at all, ” he said. “Or if you’d have settled for any half-baked bastard who’d give you babies. ”

Mab’s breath left her as if she’d been kicked. He regarded her steadily, not backing down.

“Excuse me, ” she said finally. “I need to leave. ”

“Are you coming back? ”

“If that’s your way of asking if I am having an affair—”

“You’re the last woman on earth to have an affair. You’d have to let someone in, to do that. ” He blew out a breath. “Don’t leave. Talk to me—this is important, Mab. ”

No, she wanted to shout, it’s not more important than the job in front of me! I have to visit a lunatic in an insane asylum to verify if there’s a traitor loose in the country. A traitor who sold wartime military secrets from a place so secret, I’m not even allowed to dream about it. That’s what’s more important here, darling!

But there was no version of that she could voice. What a thing it was to have so many secrets inside a marriage. Her husband shared her table and her bed and her body, and he had no idea how many lies Mab had had to tell him over the years.

The children started to fuss, aware of the tension in the room. Mab swooped her son up and squeezed him tight. “Your mum has to go away for a few days, Eddie. ” She wondered if men felt like this going off to war. I don’t want to leave, but there’s a fight to be won, and I have to do it. She passed Eddie to his father and buried her nose in Lucy’s soft dark hair. Little Lucy didn’t have curls like her older sister had had, and Mab was glad. This Lucy might have shared the same name in tribute, but she was entirely herself, not a copy or a replacement. “We’ll talk when I get back, Mike. ” Mab stroked Lucy’s chubby wrist. “I promise. ”

“Will we? ” Mike followed Mab downstairs, his voice angry but his hands gentle as he walked the twins down the steps, one clinging to each leg. “It’s not a hen party you’re going to, is it? I know when you’re fibbing, Mab. ”

“You aren’t always forthcoming, either. ” Mab turned the argument round so she wouldn’t have to answer it. “You’re all stories about working on the airfields now, but I don’t think I’ve heard you say more than two words about your war years. ”

“I don’t particularly like reliving the bit where I got shot down over Kent and invalided out with a bum leg. ” Mike let the twins’ hands go so they could toddle over to their toy box. “Now, your turn. ”

Mab kissed his cheek instead. He turned his head and caught her mouth on his, pulling her against him. Mab kissed him back with all the anger she had, the heat of him igniting her effortlessly—that part of things had always been easy between them, fire to spare. But there wasn’t time, and she pulled away and reapplied her lipstick before the hall mirror. “I’ll see you in a few days. ”

“Where are you going? ” His voice was dreadfully quiet as she opened the door. “Why can’t you tell me? State secret? ”

Yes, thought Mab, slamming the door behind her. It is. And she put the whole mess that was her second marriage behind her in the Bentley’s rearview mirror, driving to the Grand Hotel to wait for Osla.

“Get in, ” Mab greeted her old friend unceremoniously, enjoying Osla’s astonished expression. “You navigate to the asylum, I’ll drive. ”

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