was in flux and he must have looked and sounded the English gentleman. She imagined he’d told them some sad story and got them to believe it.
‘So where are you living?’
Her question was deliberately bland. When he’d appeared on her doorstep the night before last, he had let slip that he’d looked for his parents in the East End, but he was not about to confess the layers of mistruth he’d been spinning ever since she’d known him. And now his mother and father were gone, wiped out by a German bomb, there seemed little point in raking up old lies.
‘The East End,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Whitechapel.’
She remembered the address he’d given her, a shop in Gower’s Lane. She knew the road and it struck her that it was only a stone’s throw from Spitalfields, where they’d both been born. He misinterpreted her silence and said defensively, ‘I’ve hardly any money and it was the cheapest lodging I could find.’
She was still thinking. She had a very small sum saved. Should she offer it to him, or was that ridiculous? It was nowhere near enough to purchase a berth on a ship to New York. And that was without reckoning on those all-important papers. Even more important in America, she imagined, since the country was not at war and would police its borders rigorously.
‘Is the interrogation officially over?’
He smiled across at her and for an instant she glimpsed the old Gerald, the man with whom she had fallen so deeply in love. Or thought she had. His fair hair gleamed bright in the spring sunshine and though his cheeks were emaciated and his frame thin, he could almost be the same handsome man.
‘I’m sorry if it sounded like an interrogation. I didn’t mean it to be. But so much has happened to both of us since …’
She saw a quick flush mount to his face. ‘I gather Grayson Harte rode to your rescue.’ So far he’d said nothing about that terrible night, but that was not surprising.
‘So you know what happened?’
‘The tale spread like wildfire. Tales always do in India. The village was naturally desperate to hear the gossip from up river and siezed on anyone who’d been in Jasirapur. But the story they got was only half a one. I gathered from their talk that the gang had been apprehended and put in jail awaiting trial, but I heard nothing about you. I had no idea if Harte and his minions turned up in time.’
‘As you see, they did.’
There was a cold silence as they sat staring across the lake, small ripples now disturbing its surface. A stiff breeze had begun to blow and the little red painted boat was bobbing precariously away on the waves. The small boy started to cry.
Gerald shifted irritably in his seat. ‘So—what’s your plan?’ he repeated.
‘I don’t have one.’
Apparently they’d said all they were going to say about the terrifying event they had shared. India was to be a closed subject between them.
‘What do you mean, you don’t have one?’
‘I told you, Gerald, I have no idea how I can help you.’
‘Jack,’ he interrupted her.
‘Jack,’ she repeated, though the sound of the name stuck on her tongue. ‘I’ve very little money but you’re welcome to what I have. I doubt, though, it will get you much further than Southampton. And as for the papers, how am I to get them?’
‘You’re a nurse. You have patients.’
‘What has that to do with anything?’
‘Patients are always grateful to their nurses and some of them must have influence. Surely you can use that.’
‘I work at St Barts, in the City.’
‘A City man then. Perfect.’
‘The City men, as you call them, go home to the suburbs at night. They have transport and money to escape the raids. It’s the East End that suffers—you must know that—you’re living there. Its people are our patients, people from small terraced houses, from crowded tenements, people with very little and even less when the bombers have finished. They’re grateful certainly, but influential, no.’
‘You’ve changed, you know. You’ve become a hard woman.’
‘Because I can’t help you? You’re being foolish.’ She looked away from him. ‘If I have changed,’ she said slowly, ‘it can only be a good thing. At least for me. It means that for the first time in my life, I’m strong enough to defend myself.’
He had the grace to look uncomfortable, but it didn’t stop him from worrying at her.
‘Grayson Harte was never a district officer in India, was he? I knew from the first he was an imposter. I told you so, didn’t I?’
She said nothing, wondering why he should alight on Grayson’s name again. She wasn’t left in ignorance long.
‘I’ve been thinking.’ He stretched his long legs and relaxed back into the canvas sling. ‘The district officer role was just a blind. Harte was in Secret Intelligence, wasn’t he? Most of those beggars are working in London now, I’ll be bound. Harte may have had to stay in India for the gang’s trial, but he can’t be there still. He’s almost certainly close by and if we’re talking influence, who better than an SIS officer to help me?’
She swallowed hard. It was exactly what Connie had said, but she hadn’t wanted to listen to her and she didn’t want to listen to Gerald either. Contriving a meeting with Grayson was the last thing she’d expected to do, and the last thing she wanted.
‘Nothing to say? Harte always had a soft spot for you. Sweet on you, I thought at the time. And he proved your white knight in the end, didn’t he?’
There was a new bitterness to his voice. Even now, she thought guiltily, even now that she had Gerald beside her, flesh and blood and alive, she hadn’t thanked him for his final act of heroism in trying to save her life. She should do it, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to utter the words. Her sense of betrayal was just too great.
‘Who better to get me my papers?’ he taunted.
‘I don’t see Grayson.’
‘Now, I find that remarkable.’ He gave a smirk. ‘I thought he’d be a regular at the Nurses’ Home.’ She could have hit him but instead clenched her fists tightly. He looked down at her hands and the smirk grew. ‘What’s the matter? Didn’t it work out between you? That’s sad. But then comfort yourself with the thought that it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. You have a husband alive and Grayson is far too much of a gentleman to steal another man’s wife.’
‘I don’t see him,’ she repeated heavily.
‘But you could. If you chose.’ He leant over and took her hand. His touch was far gentler than she expected. Rhythmically, he stroked
