Letters to the Lost (23 page)

With a sigh she sat up. Did men like that still exist, or was Dan Rosinski the last of a dying breed?

The phrase sent a shiver up her spine. She thought of the letter downstairs and felt a hot pulse of alarm.
I don’t have much time left . . . Forever is finally running out . . .

The sky beyond the filthy window was dark, but there was still a thin strip of pink behind the chimneypots of the houses opposite. The shops wouldn’t be closed yet. She still had time to buy writing paper and envelopes, and candles.

She had read so many of Dan Rosinski’s letters, but now it was time to write one to him in return.

17

1943

The train was dirty and crowded, like all trains were these days. Stella had walked along virtually its entire length, gritting her teeth and feigning indifference to the whistles and catcalls of the soldiers crammed into the corridors, as she looked for a carriage that wasn’t full of khaki. Eventually she’d spotted an empty seat in a compartment with two sleeping sailors, and a harassed-looking mother with two children. It was only after she’d stowed her small case on the overhead luggage rack and sat down that she noticed the greenish pallor of the smallest child.

‘Travel sick,’ sighed the mother, meeting Stella’s eye. ‘Threw up three times on the train from Maidstone this morning. Wish I never gave ’im ’is breakfast – waste of bread and marge.’

Stella smiled faintly, wondering how she’d failed to pick up the smell that hung around the child, and whether it was too late to grab her suitcase and leave. Maybe she should just get off at the next station and go back to London – it was a mistake to have ever agreed to this. She turned to look out of the window in the hope of deterring the woman from making further conversation.

The signs had been removed from the stations at which they stopped, making her feel more disorientated than ever. Her face was a ghostly smudge reflected in the glass – as white as the little boy’s. The train plunged into a tunnel, bringing it into sharper relief and revealing two black whirlpools for eyes, incongruously topped off by the jaunty little straw hat that was Ada’s latest trophy from the donations haul.

She tugged it off. It looked ridiculous.
She
looked ridiculous, trying to be sophisticated in her remodelled jumble sale dress. Oh God, what was she doing? Risking everything she’d got, everything she’d ever wanted – a home, security, a family of her own – for what? A dirty weekend? That was obviously what he had in mind, what all the letters and the planning and scheming had been about. But he hardly knew her. Two kisses – not enough to put him off yet. She thought of the slinky silk slip beneath her dress and panic surged up inside her like milk coming to the boil. He’d probably take one look at her in it and change his mind, like Charles had on their wedding night. Oh God . . .

‘You all right, love? You look a bit peaky yourself.’

‘Just going to the loo,’ Stella muttered, getting to her feet.

The lavatory at the end of the carriage was taken, so she walked down the swaying train, past clusters of servicemen smoking out of the windows and passing round pictures of girls in bathing suits, to one that was empty. Inside it was cramped and reeking, the smell almost worse than that in the compartment she’d just left. She faced herself in the mirror.
Too late to turn back now. You’ve started this and now you have to see it through.
From her handbag she took the lipstick Nancy had pressed on her before they left – together, so it looked like they were going to her fictional mother’s – and twisted it up. What did the magazines call it? The red badge of courage. Tentatively she dabbed it on. It looked gruesome against her corpse-like pallor; garish and wrong – a little girl’s clumsy attempt to be a lady. She tried to rub it off again, though it was hard to get rid of the stain.

Someone knocked sharply on the door, startling her. Muttering apologies she stumbled out. She couldn’t face going back to her seat so stood by an open window, letting the wind buffet her face. It wasn’t a long journey – that had been the point – and far too soon the train was sliding between the backs of houses, past scrubby gardens where washing flapped across rows of vegetables.

In a few minutes they’d be there. She went back to her seat to collect her case. The smell of vomit hit her as soon as she opened the door to the compartment, where the woman was scrubbing furiously at the seat with a handkerchief. Stella collected her case and retreated hastily.

The blur of faces on the platform came into focus as the train slowed, then came to a halt with a great shuddering sigh. Out in the corridor Stella hung back, pressing herself against the window to let the people who were spilling from compartments out onto the platform ahead of her. For a long, lightheaded moment she stood in the empty corridor, staring at the open door until a guard appeared.

‘Cambridge, love. You getting off here?’

The station was a sea of khaki, retreating now, like the tide. She was shaking, curiously cold even though she could feel the sweat soaking under her arms, terrified that he wouldn’t be there, dreading that he would be.

He was.

Leaning against the wall by a machine dispensing Fry’s chocolate, his hands in his pockets. He straightened up when he saw her, unhurriedly, and came towards her. His face was grave, his smile gentle, as if he sensed her uncertainty. And shared it?

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said ruefully, picking up her case. ‘I was half expecting to see Nancy striding down the station. And don’t get me wrong, I like Nancy, I just don’t want to spend a couple days with her.’

It wasn’t like the reunions she watched with Nancy at the pictures. But then, she wasn’t like those women, those Hollywood actresses with their shining hair and well-cut clothes and photogenic vulnerability. He didn’t try to kiss her, or even take her hand as they walked out of the vast whale’s belly of the station and into the unfamiliar city.

Maybe he was having second thoughts too.

Maybe he’d changed his mind already.

*

He felt like a kid who’d captured the most beautiful, delicate butterfly and was sickened at the sight of it, trapped and helpless inside his net. He’d been so focused on grabbing this time with her that he hadn’t actually thought what he’d do when it came. Actually, that was a big lie. He’d thought about it plenty – in fact, thinking about it had been just about the only thing that had stopped him losing his mind these past two weeks. It was just that all of the things he’d imagined seemed completely inappropriate now.

With heroic effort of will he held back, resisting the urge to gather her up into his arms and bear her back to the hotel like a caveman. She was as brittle as glass, and he was afraid that if he touched her she’d shatter. Guilt, he guessed, trying hard not to mind, and to direct his frustration and anger – unfairly perhaps, but what the hell? – at her cold-hearted bastard of a husband. He wasn’t just making the cold-hearted bastard bit up because it suited him, Nancy had been pretty forthcoming on the subject of Reverend Charles Thorne. ‘Bastard’ had actually been her word, along with ‘arrogant’, ‘humourless’, ‘disapproving’ and ‘stuffy’. The thought of Stella throwing herself away on a man like that, a man who didn’t even love her, made him feel incandescent with fury.

‘How about we drop your case back at the hotel, then go for tea someplace?’ he asked as they stood at the bus stop outside the station. In the bright summer afternoon her face was white as paper, her lips unusually red by contrast. They twitched into an unconvincing smile as she nodded, but she didn’t meet his eye.

On the short bus ride she sat beside him, but might as well have been a hundred miles away as she gazed out of the windows and folded her ticket into tiny pleats with trembling fingers. Dan felt the happiness that had sustained him through the past week – the sense of anticipation and excitement at seeing her again – cool and set into something entirely different. Something that felt like despair.

The hotel was the best Cambridge had to offer; an imposing gothic edifice overlooking a pretty stretch of grass that for once wasn’t disfigured by rows of Brussels sprouts and potatoes. He’d deliberately arrived early and checked in, anticipating that she would find the whole business of pretending to be married awkward and painful, so he led her straight past the uniformed doorman with the poker up his ass and through the echoing lobby to the stairs, to spare her the inquisitive eyes of the elevator bellboy. His heart was beating too fast again, adrenaline sluicing through his veins and making him feel a little shaky. It was happening more and more lately, not just on the flight line in the morning when they were warming up the engines for take-off, but at other times, stupid times, like at 3 a.m. when he should be asleep.

He was painfully aware of her, trembling like a convicted woman on the way to the gallows, as he unlocked the door to the room he’d been given earlier, and stood back to let her go in first.

The bed, with its plump, blue satin eiderdown, seemed huge and threatening. She walked around it and went to stand at the window, her back to him and her arms crossed over her chest. Dan put the suitcase down, at a loss. Everything was wrong and he didn’t know why, or how to put it right. The wrongness was also a shock. For weeks her letters had been the only thing that felt right, the thing he had come to rely on in a world full of uncertainty and fear. He felt like a guy who’d just pulled the rip-cord on a parachute only to discover that the canopy hadn’t opened.

‘Stella . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’

Her voice was low, vibrating with nerves. Her head was bent, her hair partly obscuring her face. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms, to hold her gently until she’d stopped shaking and the tension had ebbed out of her shoulders, but everything about her resisted approach. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and sighed.

‘It’s OK . . . You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to stay either. Forget going out for tea. I can take you straight back to the station, if that’s what you want.’

She said nothing, but nodded her head jerkily.

Disappointment solidified in his throat, and he didn’t trust himself to speak. He couldn’t blame her for not wanting to stay – he should never have put her in this position by asking her here in the first place. He’d turned into one of those men on the base: crass, graceless, clumsy. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, and when he dropped it again and looked at her he saw a single crystal tear fall and shatter on the floorboards. Self-disgust washed through him.

‘Stella . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have suggested this. I was wrong to push you.’

‘You didn’t push me.’

‘It was my idea. I wasn’t thinking straight, I guess.’ He dragged a hand through his hair and gave a hoarse, rasping laugh. ‘I guess I wanted it so much I didn’t stop to think about you. About what you want.’

‘I do want it.’

Her voice was so small that he thought he’d misheard. Her head was still bent, her face hidden.

‘What did you say?’

Slowly she lifted her head and her hair fell back. ‘I
do
want it . . . more than anything . . . but I don’t know . . .’ Her eyes were haunted. ‘I don’t know if I can—’

‘I don’t understand. Is it him? Charles? Because I—’

‘No. It’s not him, it’s me.’ She was whispering, twisting her wedding ring around and around on her finger. ‘I’m . . . I’m no good . . .’

Confusion buzzed in Dan’s head. Turning away from her he paced across the room, needing to put some distance between them so he couldn’t see the shimmer of tears on her eyelashes or the trembling of her mouth. ‘That’s not true. Stella, you are good through and through, and if that bastard, or the church, or
anyone else
has made you feel that you’re worth less as a person because we—’

She made a hiccupping sound, half-laugh, half-sob. ‘I don’t mean it like that. I mean I’m no good . . . at
that
. . .’ Her eyes moved meaningfully towards the bed and the tears that had been brimming in them overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. ‘I shouldn’t have agreed to come. I shouldn’t have let you think—’

Jesus.
His self-restraint dissolved and, covering the distance between them in two long strides, he took her in his arms. She was absolutely rigid and he could feel the frantic beating of her heart against his chest as he rocked her gently, shushing and soothing.

‘I’m so sorry. I’ve . . . tried . . . with Charles, and . . . and he . . .’

‘Shhh.’ Very gently he kissed her mouth, silencing her. After a moment of stillness her lips parted and she was kissing him back; hesitantly, tremulously. Triumph, relief, hope pulsed through him. And desire, but he fought that down again. Sliding his fingers into her hair he moved his mouth from hers to kiss along her jawline. Pausing by her ear he took the lobe gently between his lips and breathed, ‘With all due respect, Charles is an idiot.’

That was only a half of his theory, but he didn’t want to go into the rest of it now, not with her delicious body arching against him, her fingers digging into his biceps as his mouth moved across her collarbone. Through the thin fabric of her dress he could see the outline of her nipples and had to brace himself as lust hit him like a sledgehammer in the gut.

‘Christ, Stella. You’re . . . incredible . . . You have nothing to prove, and you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to.’ With mammoth effort he lifted his head and held her close again, burying his face in her hair. ‘We’re going out for tea now, right? And then afterwards you can decide if you want to stay, or if you want to go back to the station. It’s up to—’

She cut him off with a shake of her head. ‘I don’t want to go back to the station,’ she said, pulling out of his embrace. ‘And I don’t want tea. I want you . . .
this
. . . But I’m scared.’

‘Sweetheart, I won’t hurt you.’

‘I’m not scared of that.’ Her eyes were like spilled ink; the dark centres blotting out most of the blue. ‘I’m scared how much I want it. And . . . that I won’t be good enough for you.’