she was still feeling emboldened by her aunt’s acts of bravery, she reached into a cupboard and pulled out a box, and with tears still streaming freely down her cheeks, she began to pack away Emily’s things.
44
Now that the knowledge of what Vivienne had really done during the war was out in the open, there was one last place she needed to go: back to Cornwall to set the record straight for her uncle Tom.
The morning after their dinner, Sophie called Alex at his hotel and asked if he wanted to join her on her trip. He was delighted, and they travelled together in a hire car so she could drive her own back. On the way she realised, with surprise, she’d never taken Matt down to Cornwall. Even though their holidays often coincided she had never thought to invite him. But somehow, being with Alex, everything felt easy. He seemed to sense that she needed to take it gradually and didn’t force anything. He appeared to simply like being around her and she enjoyed being around him. They talked about art and music and her favourite architecture and what he was considering painting, and she wasn’t sure where this relationship was going but she liked how she felt around him.
Sophie had mentioned to her auntie Jean that she’d be arriving in Cornwall with a friend, but she hadn’t elaborated any more on what she was coming about, so when she arrived in her auntie’s kitchen with Alex, eyebrows were slightly raised.
‘And this is Alex,’ said Sophie, introducing him.
Auntie Jean greeted him suspiciously, clearly remembering how recently Sophie and Matt’s relationship had finally crumbled.
‘Alex and I have been working together on our joint family history.’
Jean stared at them. ‘Are you speaking about Vivienne’s story?’
‘Yes, and his full name is Alex Vonstein. The man she disappeared with… this is his great-nephew.’
Jean stared at him again as though she didn’t trust him. Like she was looking at the ghosts of the past coming forward to haunt the present. She stepped away from him distrustfully, and instinctively turned to put the kettle on.
‘We have new information, Auntie Jean, and I wanted to share it with you.’
Her aunt seemed to need to prepare herself for whatever she was going to hear. ‘Well, let’s wait till your cousin gets home. He’s been out in the fields this afternoon checking on the sheep, but when he gets back, we’ll make a nice dinner. Then you can tell us all about… this news.’
After eating an excellent dinner of lamb and roast potatoes, they settled themselves in the front room. Sophie started at the beginning of the story, informing them about the work that Vivienne had done for SOE. She showed them the war records she’d gathered. Her auntie Jean just looked at it in dismay and shook her head, struggling to take everything in.
Alex then continued the story, informing them that his great-uncle had also been working for SOE.
‘He was a Nazi,’ stated Jean, briskly.
‘He was deep undercover. He’d been back here receiving a briefing about the undercover work he would be doing for the D-Day landings, and his plane went down on the way back to France. We believe he was under a strict mandate to not break his cover for anyone, and it appeared only one person in SOE knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, the operative who knew about his case was killed. What we’ve deduced is that he must have told Vivienne of his plan because he needed her help. She’d made her way to London to find his SOE handler, but when she realised that he was dead, she felt she couldn’t divulge the secret to anyone else. The photographer took this picture, the one that was in the war museum, as Vivienne was leaving that meeting. We have records of her being in the building under her code name, Sparrow.’
‘Her code name was Sparrow?’ Jean asked.
‘Yes, that was the name she worked under in SOE’
Jean furrowed her brows again. ‘You know she left Dad a picture of sparrows she’d painted?’
‘Yes, I saw it. I think she was trying to tell him her code name, like a secret message that she wasn’t evil, that she had a plan she was following. But she couldn’t tell anyone the whole story. It was all top secret.’
‘Well, blow me down,’ said Jean as she sat down hard in her chair, staring at all the photographs that Sophie had taken at the records office and the