The Last Night in London by Karen White (reading list .TXT) 📕

hand. As he led her away from the crowd headed to the tube station, she scanned the clear sky above for planes, unable to forget her wishful thinking: that such an awful thing couldn’t happen on a perfect Sunday morning. Graham pulled her to the left, separating them from Alex and Precious. When Eva looked behind her, she saw her friend and Alex were together, part of a throng of people headed toward the tube.

“Where are we going?” she asked, nearly jogging to stay next to Graham.

“The nanny tunnel under Euston Road—not many people know of it.”

In silence, Eva followed him down a steep path on an embankment beside the sidewalk and through an iron gate completely hidden from the road. She barely had time to register where they were before he pulled her into a short white brick-walled tunnel. She could hear the traffic and the horns of the motorcars and buses on the road above them.

She was breathing heavily, from the exertion of running and the terror of anticipated explosions. Fear, too, that war was now certain and Graham would be leaving her. The hand that clutched his shook uncontrollably, and she couldn’t get it to stop.

“It’s just a drill,” Graham reassured her. “That’s the all clear sounding.”

Eva nodded, willing herself to calm down. Willing herself not to beg him to stay.

Graham pulled her to him, close enough that she felt the buckle of his jacket press against her, felt the brass buttons on his chest and smelled the wool of his uniform, felt the embroidered wings against her cheek. Eva closed her eyes, committing him to memory. “Don’t go.” The words came from her heart before her head could stop them.

“Eva.” He breathed her name into her hair.

“Promise me.”

“Anything, darling.”

“Promise me that you’ll come back to me.”

He pulled away, his eyes dark like the shadows of the tunnel. “I can only promise that I love you, Eva. That I always will.”

She stepped away, then stumbled out the other side of the tunnel into a deserted corner of the park, a secret garden. The air seemed saturated with the scent of fresh-cut grass and the heat of the late-summer day. “Well, then,” she said, her heart aching with every word, “I suppose that means I shouldn’t promise you that I’ll be waiting when you come back.”

He stopped behind her. “I know you don’t mean that.”

She choked out a sob. “Of course I don’t.” She kept her back to him so he couldn’t see the tears streaming down her face.

He put his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “I’ll write as often as I can.”

She gave him a quick nod, unsure where her voice had gone, unsure even if she wanted more letters from him, letters she’d be forced to share with Alex.

“Just promise me . . .”

When he didn’t finish, Eva turned around. “What?”

“Promise me that you’ll be careful. London is a dangerous place right now.”

“I know,” Eva said. “We’re at war.”

“Not just with bombs.” He paused, his eyes searching hers, a cold light in them that chilled her blood. “Just know that not everyone is who they say they are.”

The sound of nearby traffic seemed amplified, along with the buzzing of insects and the tweets of a bird on a branch above. It took a moment for her to respond. “Really?” she said, trying to keep the ice from her voice. “Then I promise to be very careful.”

She held her breath, waiting for his response.

“Good.”

She waited for him to say more, deciding that if he told her he knew who she was, or if he asked her to marry him again, she’d confess everything. But he didn’t. Instead, his fingers slipped beneath the rolled curls at the back of her head. “I wish we had more time.”

Desire like an ocean’s wave consumed her, threatening to pull her under. Maybe it was a natural response to having one’s life threatened, or maybe it was simply because he was Graham and he was looking at her with those eyes, and they were utterly and blissfully alone in this green oasis in the middle of London. Standing on her toes to press her face into his neck, she whispered, “We have enough.” She felt his pulse jump under her skin, and it seemed that hers raced to match his. As if they were already one.

Then she slipped her hand into his and led him back to the empty tunnel, her need for him overpowering her fear and uncertainty. And her sure knowledge that he was absolutely right about people and secrets.

She didn’t go with him to the train station, wanting his last memory of her to be not of a tearstained face on a crowded rail platform but of a tousled and thoroughly satisfied woman who’d promised him that she’d wait for him and that she would love him forever.

And all through that first long night of the war, as Precious cried herself to sleep in the room next to hers, weeping over a world that suddenly seemed too big and too evil, and as Eva clutched the ivory dolphin in her fist and prayed to a God she wasn’t sure even existed, Eva remembered the scent of freshly cut grass on a late-summer afternoon and the feel of blue-gray wool against her bare skin and beneath her trembling fingers.

CHAPTER 24

LONDON

MAY 2019

I awoke in the middle of the night, a noise or movement bolting me out of bed before I could remember where I was. I flipped on the bedside light and blinked uncertainly, taking in the unfamiliar furniture, the open wardrobe crammed with vintage dresses opposite the bed, each piece labeled with a neat hangtag of Precious’s description, all moving gently, as if someone had just walked by. I blinked and waited for my eyes to adjust to verify everything was still.

Even then it took me a moment to realize I was in Precious’s Harley House