I was sixteen, and I’d been in the trenches four months, quite long enough to lose every ideal I’d had. You’ve read the wretched poetry, I won’t repeat anything trite about barbed wire or flying bullets. I had forty-eight hours’ leave coming with my friend Kit—in the photograph, he’s the towhead on the end. The other two had already died, Arthur two weeks before of peritonitis, George three weeks before that of a scrape gone septic. It was just Kit and me left, and he was hauling me to Paris on our next leave. Only he was killed six hours beforehand, gut-shot in a pointless skirmish. I listened to him scream for an hour before a sniper on our own side finally finished him. So I went to Paris on my own.

The Eiffel Tower, the Sacré Coeur . . . I wandered round in an utter daze, looking at all the things we said we’d see, and I don’t remember any of it. A sort of veil had dropped over the whole world, and I stumbled along behind it, peering through the fog. The world had simply gone gray.

There was a hat shop on the Rue de la Paix, and for some reason I stopped in front of it. I wasn’t looking at the hats in the window, I wasn’t looking at anything. I wasn’t thinking anything. But slowly I became aware there was a girl inside, trying on hats.

I don’t remember what she looked like. I know she was tall, and had a pale blue dress. For the Rue de la Paix she looked rather shabby. She’d clearly saved up to buy a hat at this very expensive shop, and by God, she wasn’t going to be sniffed at by any of those coiffed vendeuses. She was scrutinizing those hats like Napoléon inspecting his artillery. Clearly the perfect hat was going to seal her fate in some way, and she was determined to find it. I stood there dumbly, staring through the window as she tried on one after the other, until she found The One. I remember it was pale straw, with a cornflower-blue ribbon round the crown and some wafty sort of netting. She stood before the mirror, smiling, and I realized I was seeing her as if in a bright light—as if she’d stepped out from behind that veil that was bleaching all the color out of the world. A pretty girl in a pretty hat in the middle of an ugly war. I nearly wept. Instead I stood transfixed. I could have watched her forever.

She bought the blue-ribboned hat and came out, swinging her hatbox happily. I didn’t follow her. It wasn’t about trying to find out her name or where she lived. It wasn’t about falling in love with her, whoever she was. It was one bright, beautiful moment in the middle of a hideous world, and when I went back to the trenches, I pulled that moment up and slept on it every night until the war was over. The girl in the hat, in the moment of her joy.

The veil mostly dropped back over me, Mab—it hasn’t ever really gone away. I haven’t seen the world in full color since I was sixteen years old and buried in mud at the front. I came back from that terrible place with all my limbs and most of my sanity, but I can’t say I entirely rejoined the human race. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling of standing in the wings of a play, separated from it by a curtain.

Only sometimes, every now and then, the curtain sweeps back and I see things in full color—I get yanked onto the stage, blinking and dazzled, and I feel.

There was a moment at Bletchley Park during the prime minister’s visit, where you put on your new hat and sang a little song about how a smart hat was a woman’ s cri de coeur. In that moment you became the Girl in the Hat.

I’d enjoyed your company before then, because you were lovely and entertaining. A pleasant companion on a night out, for a man who periodically tries to remind himself that the world has civilized things to offer and not just horrors. But there on the lawn, you dazzled me. You want things so fiercely—you’re so determined to wrest your fate out of the world, horrors be damned, and the odds never seem to daunt you. You will simply put on a smart hat, and conquer the world. And in that moment, I loved you.

I can’t say the veil over my eyes has disappeared simply because you have come into my life. Mostly it’s still there, making it hard for me to reach you. I have spent decades not really trying to reach anyone. But it’s beginning to part more often than it did. When you lift an eyebrow skeptically. When I sink into you and feel you arch against me. When I see you straighten your hat.

Darling Mab, you are and always will be the Girl in the Hat. The girl who makes life worth living.

—F

Mab brought the letter to her evening shift, reading it at the checking machine as she waited for Aggie to halt. She read it three times, then she put it away, hands trembling. Francis didn’t even have to be in the same bed, or the same room, or the same city to give her that feeling of being unshelled, naked as a chick peeled from its egg. She wanted to cry and she wanted to smile, she wanted to dance and she wanted to blush.

Her well-ordered plan for life had always included being married, but had nothing at all about being loved. Because love was for novels, not real life.

And yet . . .

She smiled and read the letter again.

Chapter 37

* * *

FROM BLETCHLEY BLETHERINGS, MAY 1942

* * *

Everyone likes to think cloistered academics are such sheltered innocents, but the goings-on among BP’s racy set would make a sailor blush. Partner-swapping that would put a Highland reel to shame, enough adultery for a dozen Oscar Wilde plays—you wouldn’t believe what this hothouse of cloistered academics gets up to off shift! If only BB could name names . . .

* * *

Excuse me . . . you wouldn’t be Beth by any chance? Beth who works at Bletchley Park?”

Beth looked up as she settled Boots into the basket of her bicycle. The tired-looking woman in her green cardigan looked a few years older than Beth, holding a shopping basket. “Do you work at BP?” Beth asked warily, eyeing the sign posted just past the woman’s shoulder: Tittle Tattle Lost the Battle! Beth was rubbery legged from the long bicycle ride back from Courns Wood, where she’d been giving Dilly the news that Peggy was returning to ISK soon; it was nearly nightfall and she’d only stopped to let her grumbling dog relieve himself against a post. She didn’t really want to get stuck talking to some curious stranger.

“I’m not at BP,” the woman continued, looking Beth over from the wave of hair falling over one eye to the red-sprigged cotton frock she was now able to wear without imagining her mother sniffing Only tarts wear red! “But my husband works there.”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss the work with anyone.” Beth could deliver that statement without blushing or breaking eye contact now, even when she had to say it to strangers. Though the woman looked familiar . . .

“Mum!” A little boy lurched through the shop door, seizing the woman’s skirt. “Can we go home?” Lurched because he wore bulky leg braces, and that was when Beth knew exactly who his mother was.

“Sheila Zarb,” she said. “Harry’s wife. You came to the house once, for the literary society. I met so many new people, I couldn’t remember which was Beth.”

Beth felt a horrendous blush sweep up from the collar of her dress. She stood like a tomato with ears, remembering exactly how it felt when this woman’s husband had kissed her.

“You’re definitely Beth.” Sheila nodded. “D’you fancy a drink? It’ll make this easier.”

THE BAR AT the Shoulder of Mutton inn was cozy and bright lit—worth the walk for a little privacy, Sheila Zarb said, carrying her son as Beth wheeled her bicycle. She asked the barmaid if they could borrow the private sitting room, then went behind the bar and deftly drew two pints. “I fill in the odd shift here,” she told Beth, who stood silently gripping her dog’s lead. She had no idea if she was going to be slapped or shouted at, she had no idea what Harry had told his wife, and everything inside her was cringing. I didn’t do anything, her mind insisted. I didn’t ask him to kiss me.

You certainly enjoyed it though, a second inner voice said unhelpfully.

Harry’s wife carried the pints into the private room, motioning Beth after her and closing the door with one foot. “Oh, stop blushing. I’m not going to eat you. Can Christopher play with your dog?”

Beth released Boots, who stumped toward the enchanted little boy. Clutching her glass, Beth eased down at the table opposite Harry’s wife, who sat looking at her with clear, curious eyes. Beth examined her back. Harry’s wife was tall, rawboned, with sandy hair and a face that was pleasant rather than pretty.

“Mrs. Zarb—” Beth began.

“If you’re the one my husband’s lost his head over, you can call me Sheila.”

Beth’s face heated again. She glanced at Harry’s son, but he was playing unconcernedly with Boots on the other side of the long room, and the sound of someone playing the piano in the bar outside gave their voices cover. “What—what did he tell you?” Beth found herself asking.