The Light Over London(60)

“At least it happened in a posh grocery store,” he said after a moment. “Did you ugly-cry?”

She laughed, her tension uncoiling a little bit more. “I was wearing mascara. I promise you that my ugly cry was uglier than yours.”

“Do you know the one thing I’ve found that helps? Talking about it. I know it’s cliché, but after the bread machine, I made myself start talking to my sister and my mother.” He glanced over at her as the sign for Widcote Manor’s off-ramp came into view. “And now I’m talking to you.”

As the car glided onto the winding service road overrun with late-blooming buddleia, she realized he was right. She had talked to him and she did feel better—as though a weight that had been pressing down on her chest for so long had suddenly lifted. They hardly knew each other and it didn’t make sense, but Liam somehow made her feel lighter, easier, more like herself. Just his company was beckoning her back into the world again.

“Thank you, Liam,” she said as they parked outside of Gran’s.

“For what?” he asked, turning his body fully to her for the first time since they’d left London.

She shook her head. “For agreeing to come with your divorced neighbor to her storage locker. For driving. For helping with the diary. For liking Gran.”

“I want you to know that I’d like Iris whether she was your gran or not.”

“Even when she’s flirting with you?” she asked.

“Especially then.”

She jerked her head toward the back seat. “Then I suppose we should go bring her this box.”

“And hopefully you’ll have the answer to another mystery by the end of the day.”

Liam was out of the car and around to her side before she’d pulled her purse from the back seat. He held open the door for her, and it almost felt as though this was the beginning of something.

In the lift, Cara clutched the box, staring as the numbers ticked up one, two, three.

“Are you nervous?” Liam asked, as the doors slid open on Gran’s floor.

The muscles of her jaw worked as she tried to articulate what she was feeling. “I don’t know. Gran’s held this part of her life back from me for so long. At first I didn’t think too much about it but now . . .”

“You’re wondering why,” he finished for her. “I think it’s time you asked her again.”

She knocked, and almost immediately the door swung open, as though Gran had been waiting for her.

“Cara, you’ve brought your handsome professor back.”

“Hello, Iris,” said Liam, kissing Gran on the cheek.

Rather than flirt with him further, Gran’s watercolor-blue eyes fell to the battered wooden box. “You found it.”

Cara nodded.

“Tea first.” Gran glanced down at her watch. “Or a drink. It’s nearly five o’clock.”

Anticipation shimmered in the room even as they made small talk about the drive to and from London, the state of the storage container, and the strength of Gran’s drinks. Finally, when everyone was settled with a gin and tonic, Cara gestured to the box.

“It was in the safe, just as you said. I can’t believe I didn’t remember it when I was looking for Mum and Dad’s will.”

Gran smoothed a hand over the unfinished grain. “I’ve often wondered if I was right to keep it.”

Cara held her breath as Gran lifted the lid and smiled the sad little smile of a woman being forced to remember things she’d rather forget.

“Where do you want me to start?” Gran asked, peering down at the things in the box.

“At the beginning,” Cara said.

“I joined up as soon as I turned eighteen,” said Gran. “Conscription for young, unmarried women was in place then, but I would’ve gone no matter what. Barlow didn’t see the kind of bombing the ports and industrial cities suffered, but the war was everywhere—in the films we watched, the newspapers we read, the radio programs we listened to. Everyone knew a boy who was fighting and a girl who was working in service as a medic or a driver or a clerk.

“But the war wasn’t just dreary tragedy. It was adventure too. I was convinced that I was going to be sent to Malta or Italy or some exotic place. Instead, I was stationed in Buckinghamshire.” Gran laughed when Cara sat back a bit. “I told you it isn’t much of a story.”

“What were you assigned to do?” Cara asked.

Gran waved her hand. “I was a clerk. At first I was nothing more than a glorified runner, zipping between army offices, but I had a knack for note taking and could type thanks to a secretarial course I’d taken when I was seventeen.”

Gran picked up a piece of paper from the box and handed it to Cara. “There’s a photograph of me on the day I left home.”

Cara looked at the picture of a very young Gran standing in front of a white door, wearing civilian clothes and the same brilliant smile Cara knew so well. She passed the photo to Liam.

“My old ration book,” said Gran, passing over the green book with thin, dry pages that crackled beneath Cara’s fingers. “Iris Parsons” was written in looping blue ink on the front.

“I didn’t use it until I was demobbed at the end of the war. Then we were given clothing coupons, cigarettes, and chocolate, and sent on our way.