high marg. Stella couldn’t have borne remaining at the hotel playing games. She sent up a fervent prayer that Andrew was alive – and that Tom had not set off on one of his long melancholic wanderings.
They found him up near the Gujjars’ huts chopping wood. He looked up and gave a bashful smile, and then his expression changed. ‘Esmie, what is it?’
‘A telegram,’ she said simply. ‘We haven’t opened it.’
At once, Tom dropped his axe and went to her. She took his hand and they set off down the hill almost at running pace, with Stella trying to keep up.
When they got back to the veranda, only Hester was waiting. The other guests had made themselves scarce. Tom went straight to the table and seized the envelope. For a moment he stared at it. Stella could see him swallowing hard and then he tore it open. She held onto Hester, heart pounding.
With shaking hands, he read the message. He let out a groan.
Esmie gripped his arm. ‘Tom?’ she gasped.
Stella started to shake.
Tom’s eyes filled with tears. He cleared his throat. ‘Andy . . . Andy’s alive. Tibby says he was rescued from Dunkirk.’ He let out a sob.
Esmie took the telegram from him and read it herself. ‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried.
Stella and Hester hugged.
‘Is he at home?’ asked the baroness.
‘Tibby doesn’t say,’ said Esmie, ‘so I suppose not yet. It was wired four days ago. But he’s definitely back in Britain.’
Stella couldn’t hold back her tears. ‘Oh, what a relief! I’m so glad!’
Tom reached for Esmie and clung to her. Gently she guided him onto a sofa and sat beside him. Tom broke down weeping. Esmie held him and stroked his hair.
‘It’s all right, my darling,’ she crooned. ‘He’s safe. Our boy is safe.’
Stella’s chest constricted at the sight. With a nod from Hester, they both retreated inside the hotel and left the Lomaxes alone.
Chapter 25
Ebbsmouth, June 1940
The overcrowded train shunted into Ebbsmouth late at night. They had travelled without lights on but the midsummer night shed an eerie glow through the windows. Andrew could see the outline of figures around him, hunched on benches or hunkered down on the floor, asleep or smoking in silence. Some, like him, were still in grubby combat clothing, stinking and utterly exhausted. Most were heading on to Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Stiffly, Andrew stood up and stepped over sleeping bodies to get to the carriage door. He felt a mix of relief to be in sight of home and dread at leaving the other soldiers who had been through what he had. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the horror of the retreat through Belgium and France; the roads clogged with fleeing civilians being bombed from above. He couldn’t rid his senses of the stench of rotting flesh and cordite, the screams of the dying and the sight of lifeless children strewn in ditches like rag dolls.
‘Good luck, sir.’ One of the soldiers – Jocks as they were affectionately known in the Scottish regiments – saluted him.
Andrew shook him by the hand. ‘And good luck to you too, Private.’
In the half-dark, Andrew saw indistinct figures at the station barrier. He could see that one wore a large hat with a feather: Auntie Tibby. His eyes smarted and he felt a flood of affection. It took him back to his very first arrival as a callow youth on this very same platform – with Stella at his side – meeting his Ebbsmouth relations for the first time. Fleetingly, he wondered if word had got through to his father that he was safely returned from France. Did Stella know and, if so, how much would it mean to her?
Andrew shook off the thought. He was about to be reunited with some of the people he cared for most.
His mother rushed at him first. ‘My darling!’ Lydia clasped him, swallowing down a sob.
He patted her back. ‘I’m fine. A bit smelly, but all in one piece.’
She pulled away and fumbled for a handkerchief. ‘Yes, you do rather whiff.’ She half-laughed, half-cried. ‘Surely they could have given you a good bath and fresh clothes?’
‘It was all a bit chaotic,’ Andrew said, suppressing the memory of being crammed onto an overloaded merchant ship with men dying of their wounds and medics frantically trying to staunch blood and save lives. ‘They just wanted to get people onto trains and north as quickly as possible.’
Tibby hugged him, not caring what state he was in. ‘I’m so glad to