the way and Dolly had no choice but to stay where she was and wait for him to let her go. He appeared to be deciding what to say.
Dusk was beginning to fall, and across the street Dolly saw Kitty and Louisa, arriving home from work. Kitty looked up and her mouth formed an ‘o’ when she saw what was happening, but Dolly didn’t have a chance to smile or wave or put a bright face on it.
‘Miss Smitham?’ said Henry Jenkins, and she had to struggle to meet his eyes. He spoke as one might to a truculent child, worse, a menial servant who’d forgotten her place, given herself over to elaborate fancies and dreams of a life far above her station. ‘Run along now, there’s a good girl,’ he said. ‘Look after Lady Gwendolyn and do try not to get yourself into any more trouble.’
Seventeen
University of Cambridge, 2011
THE RAIN HAD CLEARED and a ripe moon broke silver through streaky clouds. Having already paid a visit to the Cambridge University Library, Laurel was now sitting outside Clare College Chapel, waiting to be knocked over by someone on a bicycle. Not just any someone, she had a particular cyclist in mind. Evensong was almost over; she’d been listening from the bench beneath the cherry tree for the past half an hour, letting the great organ and the voices of the choir transport her. Any minute, though, it would all stop and a cluster of people would burst from the doors, claim their bikes from the thirty-odd jumble stacked in metal racks by the door, and whizz past her in different directions. One of them, Laurel hoped, would be Gerry; it was something they’d always shared, the two of them, their love of music—the sort of music that made one glimpse answers to questions they hadn’t known they were asking—and as soon as she’d arrived in Cambridge and seen signs outside the college advertising evensong, she’d known it was her best chance of finding her brother.
Sure enough, a few minutes after Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb came to its breathtaking conclusion, as people started to emerge in pairs and small groups through the chapel doors, one of them walked out alone. A tall lanky figure whose arrival at the top of the stairs made Laurel smile because it was surely one of life’s most simple blessings to know someone so well you could pick them immediately from the other side of a dark courtyard. The figure climbed onto a bicycle and pushed off with one foot, wobbling a bit until he picked up pace.
Laurel stepped out onto the road as he came close, waving and calling his name. He almost knocked her over, before stop-ping and blinking at her through the moonlit dark. The most wonderful smile broke across his face and Laurel wondered why she didn’t come to visit more often.
‘Lol,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see you. I tried to call; I left messages.’
Gerry was shaking his head. ‘The machine kept beeping, that little red light on the front wouldn’t stop bloody blinking at me. It was defective, I think—I had to pull it out of the wall.’
The explanation made such perfect Gerry sense that no matter how infuriating it had been, not being able to contact him, no matter the way she’d worried he was bitter with her, Laurel couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it gave me an excuse to come and visit anyway Have you eaten?’
‘Eaten?’
‘Food. Annoying habit, I know, but I try to do it a few times a day.’ He messed his tangle of dark hair as if trying to remember.
‘Come on,’ said Laurel, ‘my shout.’
Gerry walked his bicycle beside her and they talked about music as they made their way to a small pizza restaurant built into a hole in the wall overlooking the Arts Theatre. The very place, Laurel noted, where she’d taken herself off as a teenager to see Pinter’s Birthday Party.
It was dark inside, with red and white check cloths and tea lights flickering inside glass jars on the tables. The place was crowded with diners, but they were pointed to a free table at the back, right near the pizza oven. Laurel took off her coat, and a young man with long blond hair falling in an elaborate sweep across his eyes wiped down the surface and took their order for pizzas and wine. He was back in a matter of minutes with a