D-Notice by Bill Walker (books to read for self improvement txt) 📕

Lillian checked the clock on the bedside table, its radium dial glowing faintly. 8:45.

Michael’s meeting had started an hour and forty-five minutes ago, and would no doubt go on for a while. She had plenty of time to make it home before him, so why did she feel so anxious?

Perhaps, it was that ominous tone in his voice when he’d called her, that certain hesitation that signaled that something was amiss. Then again, why was she trying to fool herself? It was guilt, plain old guilt that made her feel this way. And time would be the only purgative that would rid her of it. Time...and Michael’s love. She’d betrayed him in body and soul, but now she would stick by him, no matter what happened. Paul had promised to stay out of her life unless absolutely necessary. Lillian said a small prayer that he was as good as his word. She wanted no more of his secretive ways.

Retrieving her coat from the chaise lounge, she took one last look at her lover, her eyes tracing the heavy line of his jaw and the soft pout of his lips. Then she left the room, taking the back stairs and exiting the hotel through a fire door leading into the alley.

She hailed a cab on the Strand, taking it to Charing Cross station, where she boarded the 8:55 train to East Brixton. It was blessedly empty, allowing her to sit and compose the thoughts that raged through her jumbled mind. She wanted to be home before Michael, she wanted to feel his arms around her and know that everything would be all right. And when he walked in that door, she would have the candles lit and the news of his child on her lips.

When the cab pulled up in front of 28 Benedict Road at 9:23, Lillian paid the driver and then rushed inside, slamming the door behind her, a sigh of relief escaping her lips. She left the lights out, preferring the dark, and padded into the kitchen where she brewed up a pot of Darjeeling. The odor of the warm, fragrant tea filled the tiny kitchen, reminding her of her youth and bringing unwanted tears to her eyes. It was a childhood far different than the one she’d told Michael when they first met, one that would horrify him for a vastly different reason. It was one more lie, one more secret between them, and she wanted it all to stop—here and now. She vowed that someday, when this ghastly war was over, and their futures were more secure, she would risk the loss of his love and tell him the truth.

For now, however, the truth must remain where she had always lived...in the shadows.

Chapter Six

The sleek black Humber staff car shot northward on the A113, its eight-cylinder engine thrumming with unchecked power. At this late hour, the road was all but deserted, a narrow winding black ribbon pelted by a driving rain. The tires swished through puddles and the wipers marked cadence in time with the dull throbbing in Thorley’s temple.

Slouched on the butter-soft maroon leather seat directly behind the uniformed driver, Thorley listened as Peter MacIlvey continued briefing him on his mission. The older man’s voice was a heated whisper, as he hammered home the facts over and over again. For a brief moment all the sounds he heard blended into a soft roar and his vision blurred.

It was hard to believe that scant hours before, he’d been sitting comfortably in his little rabbit hole listening to the radio. Now, he sat in an overheated staff car headed north toward an airfield outside Chipping Ongar, where a plane waited expressly for him. Thorley found it odd they were heading away from the coast and asked MacIlvey why he wasn’t flying out of Croydon or Lympne. He was told that his mission was so secret, they couldn’t risk even the slightest attention by civilian or other military personnel.

Watching as the dense, crowded city turned to soot-stained suburbia, Thorley found he couldn’t keep Lillian from intruding into his thoughts. It was now just after 10:00 p.m. and he knew she would be frantic with worry, wondering if something had happened to him. Sir Basil had promised him he would personally inform her as to Thorley’s circumstances, all within the limitations of the Official Secrets Act, of course. But that promise was little comfort.

Feeling dizzy, Thorley cracked open the window next to him, letting the frigid night air and the cool rain blow into his face. It felt wonderful.

“Thorley, be a good man and close the window,” MacIlvey said, his lips pursed with disapproval. “It’s bloody freezing.”

He shot the older man what he hoped was a hateful glare, and cranked up the window, instantly raising the temperature in the car back to its former oven like state.

“How much further is it?” Thorley asked.

MacIlvey squinted into the dark, as if trying to spy a familiar landmark by the two tiny pinpoints of light emanating from the Humber’s masked headlights. “About five miles. Are you clear on everything? Do you want to go over it again?”

“No thank you. I think if I have to hear it all one more time, I’ll go mad. How could something like this have happened?”

MacIlvey’s eyes narrowed and he focused his attentions somewhere out in the dark. “I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that it’s the fortunes of war, and all that rot.” He paused, letting that thought sink in. “Let us just say that sometimes politics and expediency are more important than people.”

“If that’s true, then we really don’t deserve to beat that bloody corporal.”

MacIlvey’s laugh sounded dry and humorless. “You have a lot to learn, my boy, a lot to learn.”

Thorley