Laurel stopped beneath a streetlight glowing orange, as Gerry said, ‘They were never friends, Lol. Ma and this Vivien Jenkins, according to Dr Rufus they were never friends.’
‘What?’ She figured she’d misheard.
‘They hardly even knew each other.’
‘Ma and Vivien Jenkins? What are you talking about? I’ve seen the book, the photograph—of course they were friends.’
‘Ma wanted them to be friends—from what I read, it was al-most as if she wanted to be Vivien Jenkins She became obsessed with the idea that they were inseparable—“two of a kind”, were his exact words, but it was all in her head.’
‘But … I don’t …’
‘And then something happened—it wasn’t clear what exactly—but Vivien Jenkins did something that made it evident to Mummy that they weren’t close friends at all.’
Laurel thought of the argument Kitty Barker had spoken of: something happening between the two of them that had put Dorothy in a terrible mood and spurred her desire for revenge. ‘What was it, Gerry?’ she said. ‘Do you know what Vivien did?’ Or took.
‘She—hang on. Bugger, I’m out of coins.’ There came the fierce sound of pockets being shaken, the phone receiver being fumbled. ‘It’s going to cut me off, Lol—’
‘Call me back. Find some more coins and ring me back.’
‘Too late, I’m out. I’ll talk to you soon, though; I’m coming to Green- ac—’
The tone sounded flatly and Gerry was gone.
Twenty-seven
London, May 1941
JIMMY HAD BEEN embarrassed the first time he brought Vivien home to visit his dad. Their small room looked bad enough through his eyes, but seeing it through hers made the half-measures he’d taken to make it homely seem truly desperate. Had he really thought draping an old tea towel across the wooden chest made it a dining table? Apparently, he had. Vivien, for her part, did a marvellous job of acting like there was nothing remotely odd in drinking black tea out of mismatched cups while perched beside a bird on the end of an old man’s bed, and it had gone off rather well, all things considered.
One of those things was his father’s insistence on calling Vivien ‘your young lady’ the whole time, and then asking Jim-my—in the pipingly clearest of voices—when the pair of them planned on getting married. Jimmy had corrected the old man at least three times before shrugging his shoulders apologetically at Vivien and giving the whole thing up for a joke. What else could he have done? It was just an old man’s mistake—he’d only met Doll once before, back in Coventry before the war—and there was no harm in it. For her part, Vivien didn’t seem to mind and Jimmy’s dad was made happy. Exceedingly happy. He got on a treat with Vivien. In her, it seemed, he’d found the audience he’d been waiting for all his life.
There were times when Jimmy watched the pair of them, laughing together at some remembrance of his dad’s, trying to teach Finchie a new trick, arguing cheerfully over the best way to bait a fish hook, and he thought his heart might burst with gratitude. It had been a long while, he realised—years—since he’d seen his father without the worry line that pulled between his brows when he was trying to remember who and where he was.
Occasionally, Jimmy caught himself attempting to picture Doll in Vivien’s place, imagining it was her fetching a fresh cup of tea for his dad, stirring in the condensed milk just the way he liked, telling stories that made the old man shake his head with surprise and pleasure … but he couldn’t envisage it somehow. He chided himself even for trying. Comparisons were irrelevant, he knew, and unfair to both women. Doll would have come to visit if she could. Her hours at the munitions factory were long and she was always so tired afterwards—she wasn’t a lady of leisure—it was only natural she’d choose to fill her rare free evenings catching up with friends.
Vivien, on the other hand, seemed genuinely to relish the time she spent in their small room. Jimmy had made the mistake of thanking her once, as if she did him a great personal favour, but she’d only looked at him like he’d lost his mind and said, ‘For what?’ He’d felt foolish in the face of her perplexity and changed the subject by making a joke, but he found himself considering later that perhaps he’d got it all turn about and it was only for the old man’s company