they waited for the dusk to darken and the stars to appear, he’d told them about the time he’d been lost as a boy and followed the stars home. ‘You just have to look for the pictures,’ he’d said, lining up his telescope on its stand. ‘If you ever find yourself alone in the dark, they’ll show you the way back.’
‘But I can’t see any pictures,’ Laurel had protested, rubbing her mittens together and squinting at the twinkling stars above.
Daddy had smiled at her then, fondly. ‘That’s because you’re looking at the stars themselves,’ he’d said, ‘instead of the spaces in between. You have to draw lines in your mind, that’s when you’ll begin to see the whole picture.’
Laurel stared at herself in the hospital mirror. She blinked and the memory of her lovely father dissolved. A sudden pressing ache of mortal grief took its place—she missed him, she was getting older, her mother was fading.
What a bloody mess she looked. Laurel took out her comb and did what she could with her hair. It was a start. She pushed air through her lips with a thoughtful steadiness. Finding pictures in the constellations had never been her strong suit. Gerry was the one who’d been able to wow them all by making sense of the night-time sky; even as a small boy, he’d pointed out patterns and pictures where Laurel saw only deep dark space.
Thoughts of her brother tugged at Laurel. They ought to be together on this search, damn it. It belonged to both of them. She took out her mobile phone and checked for missed calls.
Nothing. Still nothing.
She scrolled through the address book until she found his number and pressed to make the call. She waited, biting her thumbnail as a distant telephone on a cluttered Cambridge office desk, rang and rang and rang. Finally, a click and then: ‘Hello, you’ve reached Gerry Nicolson. I’m shooting stars at the minute. You’re welcome to leave your details.’ No promise that he’d do anything with them though, Laurel noted wryly. She didn’t leave a message. She’d just have to go on alone for now.
Fourteen
London, January 1941
DOLLY HANDED OVER her umpteenth cup of soup and smiled at whatever it was the young fireman had just said. The laughter, the chatter, the piano music were all too loud to know for sure, but judging by the look on his face it was something flirtatious. It never hurt to smile, so Dolly did, and when he took his soup and went in search of somewhere to sit, she was rewarded, finally, with a break in the flow of hungry mouths to feed and an opportunity to sit down and rest her weary feet.
They were killing her. She’d been held up leaving Campden Grove when Lady Gwendolyn’s bag of sweets went ‘missing’ and the old woman had descended into a tremendous misery. The sweets turned up eventually, pressed into the mattress beneath the grande dame’s grande derriere; but by then Dolly was so strapped for time she’d had to run all the way to Church Street in a pair of satin shoes made for no greater duty than being admired. She’d arrived out of breath and sore of foot, only to have her hopes of sneaking in beneath the veil of carousing soldiers dashed. She was spied mid-flight by the team leader, Mrs Wad- dingham, a snout-faced woman with a terrible case of eczema that kept her in gloves and a filthy mood, no matter the weather.
‘Late again, Dorothy,’ she said, through lips as tight as a dachshund’s arse. ‘I need you in the kitchen serving soup, we’ve been run off our feet all evening.’
Dolly knew the feeling. Worse luck, a quick glance confirmed her haste had been in vain—Vivien wasn’t even there. Which made no sense because Dolly had checked carefully that they’d be working the evening shift together; what was more, she’d waved at Vivien from Lady Gwendolyn’s window not one hour before, when she was leaving number 25 in her WVS uniform.
‘Get on then, girl,’ said Mrs Waddingham, making a scoot-scoot motion with her gloved hands. ‘Into the kitchen you go. The war’s not going to wait for a girl like you now, is it?’
Dolly battled an urge to fell the other woman with a sharp jab to the shins, but decided it wouldn’t be proper. She bit back a smile—some- times imagining really was as good as doing—and gave Mrs Wadding- ham an obsequious nod instead.
The canteen had been set