She studied the message before she sent it and acknowledged that she hesitated. Recently, even asking to get together with him had made her feel as if she were asking too much. Sophie decided to send the message just as it was, and not second-guess herself. Pressing send, she watched it go and noted that it indicated that he’d read it, but he didn’t respond. She felt her stomach tighten again with this further rejection. She wasn’t mistaken to be feeling his distance; that just confirmed it.
Making her way to her bed, she passed Emily’s room and, without turning on the light, pushed open the door and whispered into the darkness, ‘Goodnight, sweet girl.’ It was a ritual Sophie did every night and if she didn’t put on the light and see the raw emptiness of the room and the bed, for just a moment, just one small moment, she could pretend her darling girl was still with them, curled up deep in sleep.
Climbing into her own bed, William, her intensely affectionate cat, crawled under the covers next to her from the warm bed he’d made for himself on a chair under the table. Cuddling up close to her, his loud purr comforted Sophie as she fell asleep wondering about her mysterious great-aunt Vivienne and what Bessy had told her about Vivienne going to France at the beginning of the war. Had it been on war work?
4
Spring 1943
Vivienne Hamilton, Vivi to all her friends, played nervously with the catch of the heavy brown suitcase, inside which was hidden the standard-issue B2 wireless, and contemplated the task ahead of her assigned by the British Spy Organisation. When SOE had briefed her before leaving, they’d made everything sound like a matter of routine. However, now that she was on a fishing boat in the middle of the night after many hours of travel heading towards the Brittany coast of northern France, she suddenly felt apprehensive.
The captain of the small vessel, Mr John Thompson, whom Vivi had known since childhood, must have sensed his passenger’s nervousness, because he came to check on her as she sat bundled up below deck.
‘We will be there in the next hour,’ he stated, looking at her with concern. Then he added as he tapped her hand in a fatherly way, ‘Your mother would be proud, Vivienne, if she were still alive.’
Vivi nodded, grateful to soon be off the water, but her stomach churned with fear as she readjusted her skirt. The French clothes she had to wear felt unfamiliar to her and were undeniably of a style she would not customarily choose. Staring at herself in the mirror before she’d left home that evening had made her realise that she was really going to do this.
It had all seemed more of a lark when she’d started. A friend had dared her to do it when they had seen the advertisement in the paper, and she was always up for a little adventure. Having escaped from a finishing school that her father had wanted her to attend, Vivi had been hiding out in London with a group of friends where they had been enjoying as much alcohol as they could manage before Hitler came to town and seized it all. When one of them had seen the advertisement in the newspaper appealing for individuals who had knowledge of France, Vivi had been very interested. Her funds had been running low and unlike a prodigal daughter, knowing she wouldn’t be received with open arms back home, she had found the advert enticing. Maybe it was a courier job, something entertaining, something that would offer her lots of money and a little excitement.
When she had got to the office to apply it hadn’t been what she had expected – it’d felt more like it might be some dry civil-service affair. But when Vivi had told the secretary that she spoke fluent German and French, the woman’s eyebrows had risen slightly above her reading glasses. Vivi had gone on to add all the places she’d travelled, which had been considerable before the war. She didn’t add how many hearts she had broken, just the fact she had lived in France for a while as a travel companion for her mother. At that time her brothers were away at school and her sister Caroline helped her father run the estate, as she got ready to move to Canada with her new fiancé. Her mother, a bohemian at heart, had loved her father