The Light Over London

by Julia Kelly

  “I thought I told you to call me Paul,” he said.

  She hadn’t realized she was chewing on her lower lip until he lifted her chin with one finger and ran his thumb over it.

  “Paul,” she whispered, still a little dazed.

  “I should like it very much if I could see you again, Louise. Would you like to walk with me Monday afternoon? I have a few hours’ leave from base due to me.”

  He was asking to call on her, to court her as though she were a lady in a Victorian novel. The idea, antiquated as it might be, charmed her.

  “I would like that very much,” she said.

  “You won’t be working?”

  She shook her head, knowing she could ask Mrs. Bakeford if she might work that morning instead. Louise asked to change her shift so rarely she was almost certain the woman would be willing.

  “Good. Then perhaps you’d do me the honor of this next dance,” Paul said.

  With her hand tucked into his elbow, she walked back to the dance floor. No one would know it looking at her, but everything had changed.

  4

  CARA

  “Are you going to tell me what’s weighing on you, or shall I guess?”

  Cara started at the realization that Gran was examining her with narrowed eyes.

  “What makes you think there’s something on my mind?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter and lifting her brilliantly colored teacup to take a sip of fragrant Earl Grey.

  “You keep staring off into space, and you haven’t once complimented my haircut,” said Gran, touching the pin-straight bob that just grazed her jaw. Regular visits to the salon she’d been going to for more than twenty years had been one of the conditions Gran had placed on moving to Widcote Manor last year. Iris Warren might be in her nineties, but she intended to maintain the sort of independence she’d enjoyed since leaving her parents’ home in 1943.

  “I don’t want to be fussed over any more than I want to be stuck in a corner to fade away,” she’d told Cara.

  Cara couldn’t imagine Gran allowing anyone to forget about her. Chic to the core, the woman refused to wear anything she deemed too “old mumsy,” opting instead for brilliant colors and clean lines. She wore white gloves and pearls to church every Sunday, and her diamond earrings to dinner. She said exactly what she thought with the relish of a woman who knew she was old enough that people wouldn’t try to hush her.

  “Your hair looks smashing, Gran,” Cara said.

  Gran shot her a sly smile. “Now you’re just patronizing me, but thank you all the same. Tell me that I’m wrong about your preoccupation.”

  Cara laughed. “You’re not wrong. I actually wanted to ask you about something I found at work today.”

  “In Mr. Wilson’s shop?” Gran asked. A lifelong patron of Wilson’s Antiques & Curiosities, she’d been the one to suggest to the crotchety Scotsman that he might want to take Cara on for a few hours a week while Cara was at university.

  “At an estate we were clearing out. It’s a diary from the war.”

  Gran sat back in her pistachio-and-white wing chair, saying nothing.

  “I think the writer was in the ATS.” Cara rose, crossed the room to the sideboard cluttered with mementos, and lifted up the portrait of Gran at eighteen. “There was a photo with the diary. It was of a woman wearing the same type of uniform you’re wearing here.”

  “Is that so?”

  A long pause stretched between them while Cara weighed her next move. Finally, she said, “I’m planning to read the diary.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought the woman who owned it would want it back if she’s still alive. Or one of her family members might.”

  Gran set her teacup down on the coffee table. “Then I hope she’s an entertaining writer.”

  Cara knew she was in danger of being shut out. When Gran didn’t want to talk about something, her lips thinned and her eyes danced around to look at everything but the person she was speaking to. It had been like this the first time Cara had tried to ask about Gran’s war work. And it had been like this when she had tried to ask about the phone call between Gran and Mum just three days before the crash that had claimed Mum’s life.

  She swallowed hard as she remembered letting herself into her parents’ house with her spare key on a break from the office. Both Mum and Dad were supposed to be at work, so she’d thought she’d just drop the book she’d borrowed off with a note. But when she’d opened the door, she’d heard her mother’s voice.

  “I can’t believe you’ve kept this from me for so long,” Mum was saying.

  Cara froze, thinking she’d walked in on a fight—all the more disturbing because her parents rarely quarreled. But no one responded. Instead, a pause lingered on, filled only by the sound of Mum treading across the parquet drawing room floor.

  “I do have a right to know, Mother.”

  Gran. Mum was arguing with Gran. Cara had known to expect some tension as they all worked to sort through Gran’s house in order to ready her for her new home at Widcote Manor, but this was something else. Something weightier.

  “I don’t care that it was during the war.”

  Another pause. Cara could imagine Mum, hand pressed to her right temple as she tried to stave off a headache.

  A sharp laugh echoed out into the hall. “Well, it’s too late for that. I’m not sure I can forgive you lying to me since the day I was born.”

  Something clattered on the floorboards. Cara was pretty sure it was Mum’s phone tossed down in frustration. Slowly she backed up, closing the door softly behind her. She’d return the book another day. Only another day didn’t come because three days later, Mum was dead.

  After the funeral, when all of the mourners had finally left the house Cara had grown up in, she’d asked Gran what the fight had been about. Gran had sat, her face blank and drawn and her hands twisting in her lap around a handkerchief. Cara had meant to press again after the pain of the funeral subsided, but she’d been swept up by her divorce and she hadn’t wanted to risk losing Gran’s support. But now it was time to try again, and the diary was the perfect entry point.

  “Will you tell me what it was like serving?” she asked now.

  Gran waved her hand. “It’ll just bore you. I never left the south of England.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I want to know more about the family past before . . .” She swallowed, unable to bring herself to talk about a day when Gran, her last living relative, would no longer be with her. Fresh from the divorce and with the sting of grief still catching her at unexpected moments, Cara was struggling to reconcile herself to the idea of that.

  Gran’s expression softened, but still she said, “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Why . . . why did you and Mum fight over the phone before she died?” When she saw Gran flinch, she hurried to add, “I’m not angry. I just want to know.”

  Even from across the room, she could see the older woman’s eyes begin to well up. “Why would you want to know about a petty fight?”

  “Because it didn’t sound petty,” Cara said softly.

  Gran shook her head, her silver hair swinging clear of her shoulders. “We’ll talk about this another time. It’s been such a trying day. Beatrice from the fourth floor came for tea. I adore her, but she does overstay her welcome and I’m exhausted. I’m sure you’re tired too.”

  Cara tried to push through her disappointment at being dismissed and forced a brightness into her voice. “That’s fine. I’ll be back on Sunday.”

  “Don’t forget to bring the tea cakes,” Gran said.

  Cara nodded, making a mental note to add a box of Tunnock’s marshmallow-and-chocolate treats to her shopping list. “I won’t, Gran.”

  She leaned down and kissed Gran on her soft, cool cheek. She was about to pull away, but Gran stopped her with a birdlike hand on her wrist. “You know I love you, don’t you, dearest?”

  Cara smiled. “To the moon.”

  Gran squeezed he
r hand. “And back.”

  Gran’s evasion nagged at Cara during the entire ten-minute drive home from Widcote Manor. While she could understand why the fight weighed on Gran, she needed to know what it had to do with Gran’s military service. Just like another family deserved to know the story of the woman whose diary was tucked away safe in the back seat of her car.

  She was so caught up in her thoughts that she barely registered the white moving van parked in front of the house next to her little thatched cottage on Elm Road until she was nearly to her drive.

  “Oh, you can’t be serious,” she muttered, pressing the brakes. The van was half blocking her drive, making it impossible for her to park on the already-packed street.

  She killed the ignition and climbed out of the car. Her keys jangled against her granddad’s dog tags she kept on her key ring as she tucked them into her purse. The van’s doors stood open, showing off to the street two stacks of boxes, a dark green armchair, and a bed frame that leaned in parts against the vehicle’s metal wall. She walked around to the cab and called out, “Hello!”

  Somewhere nearby a dog barked sharply, but no one appeared in the wide-open front door of the cottage that had been vacant when she’d left that morning.

  Sucking in a breath, she steeled herself to do something completely at odds with the particular brand of British politeness her mother had bred into her. She let herself through the little wood garden gate, walked up the path, and stuck her head into a complete stranger’s home.

  “Hello,” she called again.

  In the twilight of the autumn night, the entryway blazed with light from a pair of glass sconces. An old-fashioned hatstand with carved hooks stood haphazardly in the middle of the entryway next to a rolled-up rug. Piled up in a corner sat a stack of boxes with “Books” written on them in bold, black marker. An oil portrait of a woman with shingled hair wearing a black bias-cut dress and swathed in a gauzy white shawl was propped against a wall.

  Interwar period. Maybe British. I like her dress.

  “Is anyone here? I’m afraid the van’s blocking my drive,” she called.

  There was a great crash somewhere nearby and a clatter of nails on hardwood. She stepped back hard into the door handle with a yelp as a lanky red Irish setter burst into the entryway and leaped up on her, planting one paw on each of her shoulders and sending the contents of her bag scattering to the floor.

  She gave a little laugh as the dog’s long tongue slurped at her neck, nudging up under her chin in an aggressive display of affection.

  “You’re quite the handful, aren’t you?” she asked as she tried to ease the dog back down.

  A pounding of a pair of feet against the wood floor sounded through the house, and a man with sandy-colored hair flew around the same door the dog had sprung from.

  “Rufus, come here!” The man lunged, but Rufus danced behind Cara’s legs.

  “It’s all right,” said Cara, stooping to scoop up her wallet and a lipstick.

  Rufus barked his approval as he looked out from behind her legs.

  The man grimaced and pushed a pair of black-rimmed glasses up on his nose. “He’s hopeless, I’m afraid. He’s already failed obedience school once.”

  “What did he do?” she asked.

  “It’s what he didn’t do. The trainer called him ‘unmotivated by food,’ which is ridiculous because he sits and stares at me all through dinner.” The man shot her a concerned look. “Are you sure you’re really all right?”

  Her back ached a little where she’d collided with the doorknob, but she didn’t want to make a fuss. “I am. I’m sorry to intrude while you’re moving, but—”

  A door opened and a beautiful woman with a long blond ponytail swept in wielding a leash. In one smooth move, she snapped it onto Rufus’s collar and straightened, graceful as a ballerina.

  “Meeting the neighbors already?” the woman asked.

  “I think so.” The man dusted his hands on a pair of faded jeans that looked like they’d seen better days and grinned. “I’m Liam McGown. This is my sister, Leah.” He laughed as Cara raised a brow. “We don’t know what our parents were thinking either.”

  “They’ve never been able to keep our names straight,” said Leah, as she stuck her hand out.

  Cara shook Leah’s hand, strangely relieved to find out that the pair were not a couple. Not that she cared.

  “Cara Hargraves. I live at number thirty-three,” she said.

  Liam grasped her hand with both of his as though meeting her was the greatest honor. “A pleasure to meet you.”

  When they’d been living in the big house in Chiswick, while Simon was out playing endless games of tennis, Cara had had a habit of spending lazy summer days lounging on a cushioned chaise in her backyard, a stack of romantic books at hand. In nearly every one, the author described the moment of first contact between the hero and heroine as something electric. Tingling skin. Lightning bolts of awareness.

  It surprised her, then, that when Liam enveloped her little hand in both of his it was hardly electric. Instead, an awareness of him slid through her like fresh honey dripping from a comb. His touch wrapped around her, soothing her, and for the first time since filing for divorce she had the mad temptation to curl her body against a man’s chest just for the comfort of it.

  She tugged her hand away, breaking the connection. She’d just untangled her life from Simon’s. There was no room in her life for another man. Not yet.

  Liam nodded to her cottage. “Isn’t number thirty-three just next door?” His eyes widened. “The van. It must be blocking your drive.”

  “It is a little, yes,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry.” He starting patting his jeans pockets, a lock of his hair falling over his forehead as he looked down. “I have the keys around somewhere.”

  With a sigh, Leah pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her zip-up jacket. “These?”

  He grinned and snatched them out of her hand. “I’d be lost without you.”

  “You usually are!” Leah shouted, as he ran down the path and through the garden gate. She smiled at Cara as Rufus settled at her feet with a huff. “The stereotype about absentminded professors is sometimes so true it’s comical.”

  They watched with Rufus as Liam started up the van and backed it into the street before pulling into the slope of his drive behind a little blue Ford that was already parked there.

  “There you are,” he called as he climbed out and strode up the path to join them again.

  “How long have you lived in Barlow?” Leah asked Cara.

  “I went to university here, but I was in London for years. I just moved back over the summer,” she said.

  “So I’m not the only one new to the neighborhood,” said Liam.

  “Maybe you two should have dinner. To celebrate your moves,” said Leah, glancing between them.

  “Oh, no, I don’t think so.” The words rushed out of Cara’s mouth before she could think of how rude they made her sound. Quickly she said, “It’s just that I’m still settling into my new job and we already have a project that’s going to be keeping me at work late. I don’t know when I’ll be free.”

  “Well, that’s a shame,” said Leah with a sigh, and Cara couldn’t help but feel that she’d somehow disappointed the woman.

  Liam just shrugged. “I can understand. Lectures start in two weeks, but I’m sure we’ll see each other around. We are neighbors, after all.”

  They said a quick goodbye and then Leah gave Rufus’s leash a tug. “Come back inside, you wonderful pain of a dog.”

  Cara watched as Liam laughed and brother, sister, and dog disappeared into the house.

  She returned to her car and pulled the wheel hard to the left, swinging into her drive and parking. Reaching into the back seat, she grabbed the biscuit tin from the old Barlow University sweatshirt she’d wrapped it in. When she looked up, she saw Liam and Rufus standing at the bay window. He raised a hand in a little wave. She smiled tightly, d
ucked her head, and hurried into her house.

  The tart she’d baked for her dinner had turned out beautifully: it was golden brown, flaky perfection. Soft goat cheese melted around thick lardons of bacon nestled in a bed of sweet leeks. This was the sort of self-care she liked. Taking the time to cook for herself properly felt like the ultimate indulgence, a declaration that it didn’t matter whether Cara ate alone or not. She was worth the effort.

  She picked up her half-empty glass of minerally Spanish wine and pushed back from her kitchen table to wrap up the rest of the tart for the next day. The Old Vicarage was just down the road from a park, and she planned to bring her lunch and eat it on one of the benches she’d spotted.

  With the leftovers in the fridge, she set about washing the dishes and lining them up neatly in the bamboo rack by the sink. There wasn’t a dishwasher in the cottage’s tiny kitchen—one of the landlord’s eccentricities, the leasing agent had told her—but she liked the meditative practice of dipping, scrubbing, and rinsing.

  Simon hadn’t understood that.

  “Why don’t you use the dishwasher?” he would ask on the rare weekday evenings their jobs allowed them to be together.

  “I like cleaning up,” she’d say. “I started the meal and now I’m clearing it away. It brings everything full circle.”

  He would grunt at that and go back to sipping his port. She would smile at how much her refusal unsettled him; they could afford a Miele dishwasher, so she should use it. But she wasn’t Simon. She couldn’t make herself care about that sort of thing.

  From the day they’d left uni, Simon had been obsessed with keeping up with his friends. While Cara had grown up comfortably affluent in a big, five-bedroom brick house in Hans Place, he’d come from a modest suburb of Manchester and was eager to shake off all the middle-class markers of his childhood. He’d worked hard to reinvent himself, making the right friends at uni and taking the right job in the right industry. He’d wanted the big house in Chiswick, an expensive neighborhood of West London, because it was where his friend Sam lived. He’d become a member of the same club as Theo and Jasper, paying the exorbitant fees to join. He’d bought a Porsche 911 for himself and a Lexus SUV for Cara—even though she hated London traffic and rarely drove—because Edward had mentioned he was buying one for his wife. One summer, Simon had even tried to take up polo after Claude had invited him to play, but he was nothing more than an average rider and resigned himself to drinking champagne on the sidelines instead.