Sally looked past Evelyn, toward the windows, to the glimpse of green at the edge of the courtyard.
“We’re all bound by our secrets,” she continued. “Even me. And perhaps I should have done more for Julia. If I’m honest, I think I always knew that darkness was still in her. That she hadn’t come home reformed like we all said she had. It’s the mistake we make, isn’t it? To believe that goodness will prevail.”
She brushed the crumbs to one side of the table, then back again.
“But I came here because I needed to ask you, Evelyn: why didn’t you tell me about Julia? Why didn’t you come to me when you knew what she was up to, rather than heading straight to her? If you had, none of this would have happened. My father would still be alive, my family name would be intact, and you . . .” She paused, sucking in a breath. “You wouldn’t be in this terrible place.”
Evelyn closed her eyes, but when she did she saw Julia, her slow tumble before the bus. The smear of blood across the road like an oil slick.
“I couldn’t. The Official Secrets Act forbade me from telling anyone.”
“But you told Julia.” Sally folded her arms, her look almost triumphant. “You risked it for her.”
“I risked it for all of you. Yes, I was trying to help Julia, but I was trying to help your family too.”
“But it didn’t help. If you’d told me first, I could have spoken to Daddy, and Julia could have been stopped. He would have made her see reason. She would have listened to him. Instead, you had to play the hero.”
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn mumbled. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did.” Sally’s eyes blazed. “And I warned you, didn’t I, that Julia wasn’t the answer? I told you that she would only cause trouble. I’d known her my whole life and it was a mistake to put any trust in her. I told you how she used to steal things that belonged to me and that everyone else thought it was a great joke, remember? Do you know what she did with those books and toys when she was sick of them? She tossed them aside like garbage.”
The guard had turned in the doorway and was watching them with interest.
“Listen, I don’t have much longer . . .” Sally glanced toward the door, her voice strained. “It was hard enough arranging this meeting; I had to pull a lot of strings.”
She sat like that, staring at Evelyn for several seconds, then she reached across the table, as if she wanted to touch her. But Evelyn jerked her hand away.
Sally’s face went dangerously still, and she seemed to Evelyn a stranger for the first time, full of so much anger but also steely dignity. “I’m not to blame for this, Evelyn. You’re in here because you couldn’t decide what kind of person you wanted to be, or whose side you really wanted to be on.” She shook her head again as if she were now trying to be rid of something trapped inside it. “I thought I’d feel some relief at seeing you, some relief from this relentless grief, but I can see now that I was wrong. There’s nothing for me here. It’s all gone.”
Sally withdrew her hand and began twisting her wedding ring, a frown creasing her forehead. “I’m sorry it’s all ended up this way, Ev, I really am . . .”
The guard was approaching the table now, tapping the shiny face of his wristwatch.
Sally got to her feet, her cigarette burned all the way to the stub. For a moment, her face disappeared in the last plume of smoke and Evelyn stared, mesmerized, at that empty space. So Sally had been the magician, she thought miserably. The conjurer. Not White or Chadwick or anyone else at MI5. Not even Julia. Evelyn had always believed their friendship could withstand the strongest winds, the bleakest winters; that it could survive a meteor. But she had been wrong. It had been no more real than anything else. Sally had created this make-believe, and for the first time in a long time Evelyn could hear her mother’s voice in her head. It’s just how the world works, dear.
* * *
Later that evening, she lay on her bed facing the chipped brick wall. The cell stank of her own stale body odor and unwashed sheets, as it always did, but Evelyn was more aware of it after Sally’s visit, as though she had been shocked back to life. That wasn’t the only thing she was thinking about. A letter had come in the afternoon mail with the postmark BN8. While she recognized the handwriting, she could hardly bring herself to open it. She waited until the light grew dim at the window before tearing back the flap.
Evelyn,
I have been told this letter will reach you but that it will be read by half a dozen others before it does. I have always thought there is something shameful about baring one’s greatest pain to the eyes of strangers, but I realize I may have to change my mind if I’m to make this correspondence worth more than the paper it is written on . . .
You may write to us, dear, if that brings you comfort. I will keep writing to you. You needn’t feel afraid. It would be untrue if I said that our days are not difficult thinking of you in that place, but we know you couldn’t have done what the papers are saying you did. Some things in this world aren’t fair or even just, but we are proud of you. We want you to know that.
With love,
Dad
Evelyn read the letter twice before she folded it back inside the envelope and pushed it beneath her pillow. Then she settled back down on her bed. In the dark she could make out the desk beside the bed, and the pencil and single sheet of paper she was permitted each day. What a poor correspondent she had been to her parents all these months. Perhaps tomorrow would be the day she squashed down her shame, picked up the pencil, and began composing a reply.
Evelyn put a hand behind her head. The room felt still tonight, quiet: for once she didn’t hear the dull thud of Julia’s body being dragged under the bus. They had waited days before telling her that Julia had lived; all that time Evelyn had been haunted by the belief that she had killed her.
She glanced at the small grate near the ceiling. She still longed to be outside in the warm air, moving through the city, but simply imagining a journey out of prison would be enough for now. Besides, she had other things to think about. Most evenings before sleep she tried to picture herself sinking deeper and deeper beneath the coarse woolen blanket until she was no bigger than a speck of dirt. Somehow that made the night bearable; she would need to disappear, she had convinced herself, if she was ever going to start her life again. She had made something of herself from nothing before, though she knew now that it had been built on lies. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. When she left prison, she would build herself up, brick by brick, into the sturdiest fortress, the most impenetrable wall. She would be the person she wanted to be. She wasn’t afraid, not anymore. No matter what others might think, there was goodness in her, even if she had to dig deep to find it.
Evelyn rolled onto her side. Shadows danced across the wall, but soon her eyes grew heavy, and for the first time in months it didn’t hurt to feel the dewy summer grass beneath her fingertips or hear the swirl of air between the reeds by Magdalen Bridge as she surrendered to sleep.
March 1948
Twenty-Five
EVELYN DIDN’T REMEMBER falling asleep, but when she woke she found herself in bed, the curtains drawn. She sat up. The flat was silent, only the groan of pipes from the downstairs bathroom shuddering through the walls, and she sank back into the pillows with a moan, rubbing the heels of her palms into her eyes. Last night she had told Stephen everything and now he was gone. She had felt so close to him, but that had been just another illusion. She rolled onto her side, wretched. How easy it was to prize one person from another, that small space between them having now grown so vast she could have been orbiting a different sun. She pulled the pillow tight around her ears. How was she ever going to navigate a way back without him?
Then Evelyn heard a sound, a distinct rattle, and Stephen appeared, his hair matted, bearing a tray with a pot of tea. He was dressed in his shirtsleeves and a pair of drawers, his pale legs much hairier than she had expected. She glimpsed his foot, the one that had been so ba
dly damaged in the war, bent at an ungainly angle and rippled with scar tissue.
He set the tray down on the edge of the bed and drew back the curtains. The blue light of approaching dawn flushed through the flat.
“You’re awake,” he said.
Evelyn watched him sit beside the tray and pour the tea. After handing her a mug, he leaned back on an elbow, picking at sleep in his eye.
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “I spent the night in the armchair.”
Evelyn drank some tea. It was milky and sweet. Stephen watched her, an apprehensive look on his face.
“Evelyn, last night you spoke about your parents,” he began.
“Yes?”
“Do you . . . Well, have you seen them? Since you got out?”
Evelyn glanced toward the window. The morning was brightening. Noise had begun filtering in from Euston Road. Soon the rest of the city would be awake too. She shook her head.
“Right.” Stephen stared at the floor, his brow creased. “But they know you’re here, in London?”
“We haven’t been in touch since I was sent to Holloway,” she said. “My father wrote to me while I was in jail, but I never replied. I felt too . . . ashamed. Everyone in Lewes would have read about what I did—news spreads fast in a place like that. My parents are modest people who valued their good name. I ruined that for them. People in the town would always know what their daughter had done. That’s why I didn’t write. I wanted to spare them the reminder that I had brought this shame on them.”
“Right,” Stephen said again, his frown deepening. “And what about me?”
“You?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Is that why you never told me about Holloway and your work with Bennett White? Did you expect me to be ashamed of you too?”
“Worse than shame. Anger, repulsion, even hatred. You fought in the war. You were prepared to give your life . . .” Evelyn let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve led such a dishonest life. I hardly know who I am.”
Stephen shifted on the edge of the bed, a knee bent close to Evelyn’s hip. Feeling his warmth, she placed her hand on his thigh. They sat like that for a few minutes, neither of them speaking.
“I can’t begin to understand what the past years have been like for you,” he said quietly. “And I can’t begin to understand what it must take to start one’s life over as you have. But I do wonder—what if you were to visit them? Your parents? If only so they know you’re all right, I mean. It may begin to heal something in you.” His eyes shone. “They must miss you.”
“Miss me?” Evelyn laughed again—she couldn’t help it.
“Why, yes.” Stephen stared back at her. “If they didn’t want to keep in touch, I’m not sure they would have written to you so assiduously. Every week, wasn’t it? That is dedication. That is devotion. But when you left prison they wouldn’t have known where to find you, and that must have taken a terrible toll. I imagine every knock on their front door carries the hope that you are standing on the other side of it.”
Evelyn drew back her hand and placed it against her chest. Beneath her breastbone she felt the flicker of her heartbeat. It had never occurred to her that they might be waiting. That they would welcome her return to their home when everyone else had turned their backs. That they would accept her like this—so depleted. She looked past Stephen to her cluttered dressing table and the thick wad of envelopes, and her throat grew tight. Her father’s letters. He had written to her each week for four and a half years, and she had kept every one of those letters in her Holloway cell—first under her pillow, and then between the mattress and the wire springs—even though she couldn’t bring herself to write back.
“I never really thought . . .”
But she could see it now. They had been waiting. The letters said as much; they had shown their constancy. Her parents had never sought her remorse, as others had, or contrition. And she supposed they had never loved the woman she had tried to become, either, preferring the girl she had been, full of imperfections though she was. Perhaps that was why they had kept that awful photograph of her as a child on their mantelpiece; they could see behind the cold, sneering expression. They could see her.
Evelyn pushed back the blanket and padded toward the basin in the corner, where she splashed icy water on her face. Then she returned to the bed and, kneeling before it, dragged out her old suitcase.
“What are you doing?” Stephen asked.
She opened her wardrobe and hunted for a sweater and fresh blouse to throw into the case.
“I need to go to Euston,” she said. “Right now. I need to catch a train.”
“All right.” A look of panic flashed across his face. “Can I come with you?”
“No. I’m sorry. I have to do this alone.”
Stephen watched her move about the flat, bending down to pick up a sock, tossing aside an unwanted brooch, searching for her purse on the dressing table. She was trying not to look at him sitting there on the bed, his shoulders hunched against the cold.
“I love you, Evelyn,” she heard him say quietly. “Whatever happened in your past, I think you are a good, decent person. Someone I am proud to know.”
There was such resignation in his voice that immediately she turned around to face him. He thought she was leaving him. He was staring into his lap, the freckles on his nose darkened by the gloom, and for the first time she could picture what he had been like as a boy. Sensitive, curious, vulnerable. Perhaps that is the measure of truly knowing another person, she thought. Having the imagination to comprehend the expanse of their life and how it has come to shape them. She walked over to the bed and ran a hand over his fair hair. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I love you too, my darling,” she said.
Stephen gazed at her, astounded, until he smiled. Evelyn leaned down and kissed him, his mouth soft and sweet-smelling from the tea, his cheeks scratchy with stubble.
“I’ll be back with you in a couple of days,” she said. “I promise.”
Stephen held her for a moment, his face pressed into her neck, then let go.
* * *
The sun had broken through the clouds as she slipped out of the flat and hurried toward the station. The streets were still mostly empty, with only the milk truck trundling by on the main road. She waited outside Euston until the first attendant raised the grate on his ticket booth.
“This is an early start, miss,” he called. “Where to?”
“Lewes, please.”
He nodded to her suitcase. “Heading home?”
Evelyn had never wanted to go back, afraid that she would never find home elsewhere, afraid that she would never discover the kind of person she wanted to be. But against the odds she had managed to make London her home, and this was the first time in all the years she’d lived there that she felt like she belonged. She pictured the stroll from the Lewes station through the town, across the cobbled bridge over the river, the steep incline of the hill, her father’s face when he recognized her in the sitting room doorway. And her mother. What would her mother say? Evelyn bit her lip.
“I’m visiting my family,” she said.
“Well, there ain’t a train till nine,” the attendant said, handing her ticket through the window. “So you’ve a bit of a wait.”
The station was coming to life. The other booths had opened and people were arriving for the early trains. Evelyn bought cigarettes from the tobacconist as commuters began to emerge from the underground and spill onto the street. A warm gust of wind tunneled through the arcade and slapped hard against her cheeks, the force of it shaking the morning newspapers in their stands. She watched a dark-haired woman in a fox fur stride past, her high heels striking bluntly on the stairs as she made her way to a platform. A day ago Evelyn had been terrified of encountering Julia again, but she had finally pushed that fear behind her. She had managed to rebuild herself into something strong after all. She sucked on a cigarette as hunger scrabbled at her stomach; she hadn’t ha
d a bite to eat since yesterday’s breakfast and now she wanted another cup of tea.
Evelyn came out of the station and crossed the street. There was a cafe near the corner with a light shining behind the counter. It would open shortly, and she would sit inside while she waited for her train. She might use the telephone and call Mrs. Foy to ask for a few days off from the shop, and when she came home she and Stephen could go away somewhere—to the country, or to the seaside—before they talked about the Rome trip again. In the meantime, Evelyn was content to stand beneath the awning and finish her cigarette, watching the sun rise across the vast gray city.
Author’s Note
AN UNLIKELY SPY is a work of fiction, but several of the main characters are loosely based upon real people and the plot is shaped by real events.
I’ve always been interested in the Second World War—and in particular how London weathered these years. While the stories of the Blitz, the Battle of Dunkirk, and the Normandy landings were familiar to me, I was curious about the quieter, lesser-known period before everything kicked into gear—before the invasion of France in May 1940 in particular, when the United Kingdom was still trying to work out which way the wind would blow. During the so-called Phoney War, the intelligence agencies were at loggerheads with the government and the fear of German invasion was MI5’s most urgent spur. This fear drove their campaign to expose influential British men and women ready to support Hitler in the event of the Nazis arriving on English soil.
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