Signal Moon(4)

“I know how it looks.” Do I? Lily thought. The date was bunk; every drop of common sense said so . . . but those forty-two minutes of broadband agony kept swirling in her head. She’d been a Y Station listener for over a year, the best in the bunch here at Withernsea. Lily Baines, a petty officer with fingers like a pianist and ears like a bat. Maybe common sense should have balked at the date, but it was long after midnight, near the witching hour when all things were possible, and she’d just heard countless souls die screaming through her headphones.

And it was more than that. The Wimbledon training made you trust your ears, not your ingrained reactions. She knew what she’d heard. “If we can just entertain the possibility—”

“You’re due for a weekend off, Baines. I suggest you take it starting now. You’re clearly beginning to feel the strain.”

Lily argued for another fifteen minutes, but it was useless. Numbly, she stood clutching her sheaf of transcribed notes. If Fist-Face Fiddian wouldn’t take it up the ladder, no one would listen to a humble Wren like Lily. Station X didn’t know her from Adam. Neither did anyone on the Admiralty lines. If she rang her father and tried to get him to use his Foreign Office connections, he’d think she’d gone mad—he loved his daughters, but he thought all young girls had nothing but fluff and feathers between the ears. And wasn’t that what most important men thought? Who was going to listen to a Y Station listener with a story that sounded admittedly, utterly barmy? She could find herself reprimanded, even taken off duty or transferred . . .

Lily reversed out of the parlor, taking the stairs two at a time up to the row of hotel bedrooms that had been converted to billet the Wrens. At the end of the corridor was a telephone—to its right, the room Lily shared with a tart from Epping who snored like a foghorn. She hesitated at the head of the corridor, realizing her teeth were still chattering. She could toss this agonizing, impossible transcription in the bin, head to her room, and sleep till noon.

Or she could make the telephone call she’d been half planning even as she approached Fiddian with her scribbled transcription. Because she’d had to give Fiddian a go, of course she had to, but that didn’t mean she’d thought it would work. It didn’t mean she hadn’t immediately thought of an alternate option.

You don’t have to think of alternate options, she thought, eyeing her bedroom door. Whatever this thing you heard, it isn’t your business. You could just go to sleep.

“Do your bit and no grousing,” she said aloud, and went for the telephone.

A moment later, Uncle Andrew’s familiar voice boomed sleepily into her ear. “Lily? It’s the middle of the night, m’dear, are you—”

“Everything’s fine, Uncle Andrew. Sorry to ring so late, but I’ve got a question for you. A legal question.”

“Lord, girl, come to York on your next day off and ask me then. I’ll treat you to a splendid tea at the Grand.”

“I’m afraid it can’t wait.” Lily squeezed against the wall, letting a Wren tramp past in her robe, making for the shared loo.

“Out with it, then.” She could hear her father’s brother getting interested despite himself, probably standing in his dressing gown in his study, yawning, potbellied, and shrewd.

Lily took a breath. “Is it possible to prepare something with a solicitor to be delivered at a certain date, to a certain person? A date in the future?”

“Certainly. Can’t think how many times I’ve been trusted to have documents couriered over in three weeks’ time, once the client has had a chance to get their own financials in order first.” A cynical chuckle. Uncle Andrew took a dim view of humanity.

“I’m going to need you to do that for me.” Lily let her breath out, plans tumbling in her head every which way. “I’ll be taking the train up tomorrow morning—I’ll bring something by the office, with instructions on when and where it’s to be delivered. I’ll pay for you to keep it till it needs to be couriered over.”

“No need for that, m’dear! Doesn’t cost me a thing to pop an envelope in a drawer for you for a few weeks. What’s the notion, eh? Dropping a letter to a beau, and you want it arriving the day before he ships out?”

“Not a beau, and it’s more than an envelope, and you’ll be holding on to it for more than just a few weeks.” Lily sifted mentally through her savings. This was going to just about finish them, she reckoned. “Please mark the delivery for ST1 Matthew Jackson, who will be checking into room 202 of the Grand Hotel in York.”

Lily heard Uncle Andrew scribbling on the other end of the line. “What day?”

She felt a last teetering moment’s disbelief, looking at the date she’d scribbled down disbelievingly as she heard it trickle through her headphones. Am I really doing this? Do I really believe this is real?

She exhaled a long breath. “The ninth of March, the year two thousand twenty-three.”



March 9, 2023

York

ST1 Matt Jackson was looking forward to being back at sea. Three years at a listening station in Yorkshire wasn’t a bad gig, but sitting in a boxy room staring at screens wasn’t the same when the floor wasn’t rocking under you with the swells of long rollers.

Matt hauled his bag over one shoulder and swung toward the hotel: a tall, loose-limbed Texan in old jeans and a blue jersey, sleeves pushed back over the two scrolled lines of poetry he’d had tattooed on the insides of his forearms when he’d become a signals technician: