Winter on the Mersey(51)

Kitty nodded. ‘Let’s get a lemonade,’ she suggested. Keeping up with Laura was hot work. They ordered their drinks and she settled down to find out what all this was about.

‘So …’ she said.

Laura pushed a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, then opened her weekend bag and drew out a book. ‘I’m not quite sure how to begin,’ she admitted. ‘I’m so glad you agreed to meet me, Kitty. You might think I’m going crazy, but at least you’ll understand.’

‘Whatever is it?’ asked Kitty, slightly worried now. ‘Are you in trouble of some kind?’

‘No, nothing like that. Well, no more than usual. My fellow drivers hate me now they’ve found out about Peter, but it’s just silly jealousy,’ Laura sighed. ‘Makes me realise how lucky you and I were to find each other and Marjorie. Kindred spirits, that’s what we were. There’s rather a lack of harmony in the current crew. Anyway, that’s by the bye.’ She opened the book and a scrappy piece of paper fell out. ‘Take a look at that.’

Kitty leant forward and picked it up, reading the brief message and turning it over. ‘Back soon. Safe and well. Don’t worry.’ She looked up at Laura with a puzzled frown. ‘Is that it? That’s all there is? Who’s it from?’

Laura told her of the strange man in the park and how she’d thought it was one of Peter’s little jokes to begin with. ‘It isn’t, though,’ she said. ‘I actually asked him – his uncle’s flat has a telephone and I managed to make a call to his base. Fearfully lucky to have got through, and of course I couldn’t stay on the line for long, but I would have felt like a proper twit if I hadn’t asked him. I just laughed and said it didn’t matter, there’s no point in worrying him.’

‘No,’ said Kitty, thinking hard. ‘But if it wasn’t him, then who has sent this?’

‘Exactly,’ said Laura. ‘Who do I know who is away from home?

‘Plenty of people we’ve trained or worked with, or people Peter knows,’ Kitty pointed out.

‘Yes, but who would go to the trouble?’ Laura asked. She paused. ‘Someone who thinks I might believe they’re sick or dead. Someone who wants me to know they’re all right.’ She raised her hands in the air and let them fall again and then blew out a long breath. ‘I’m trying not to get my hopes up …’

‘Oh.’ Kitty suddenly understood. She stared directly at her friend, trying to read her expression. ‘You think it could be Freddy.’

Laura wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘I know it’s unlikely – highly unlikely. But who else do I know who is far from home and cut off and would want to get a message to me like that?’

Kitty knew what she meant and yet didn’t want to give her friend false hope. ‘Laura, it’s been ages. He disappeared before we even met, didn’t he? It’ll be coming on for—’

‘Four years,’ said Laura dully. ‘Autumn 1940, it was. Look, I realise that’s a long time for anyone to be missing and then to suddenly communicate.’

Kitty reached across and took her friend’s hand. ‘It is, Laura. It really is. I suppose anything could happen, but it’s such a long shot.’

Laura shook her head, her usually carefree face now full of desperation. ‘But it might be, mightn’t it? In theory it’s possible, isn’t it? You see why I think I’m going crazy. I’ve been tormenting myself from the moment I saw it. It could just, just be him, alive after all that time.’

Kitty felt unbearably sorry for her friend, and yet she still didn’t feel convinced. ‘Then why now? Why wait for years? It doesn’t really make sense, does it?’

‘I agree – but then I can’t help wondering what if …?’ Laura said. ‘What if he’s been captured and brainwashed or something, what if he’s been held somewhere against his will all this time? And then I thought – with D-day and us gaining more and more territory in France – whether he might be there, whether circumstances have changed somehow, and he’s finally been able to communicate … Oh, I don’t know. You’re not convinced, I can see it on your face.’

Kitty bit her lip. ‘Maybe, but it’s still such a long shot.’

Laura slumped in her chair, all the fight leaving her. ‘It is, you’re right. It’s probably those beastly drivers ganging up and playing a cruel prank.’

‘They don’t know about Freddy, do they?’ Kitty asked. She thought it highly unlikely that Laura would have made her situation generally known, given how painful her brother’s disappearance was for her.

‘No, I wouldn’t tell anyone I wasn’t close to,’ Laura confirmed. ‘It’s too awful to explain over and over again. Really it’s just you, Marjorie, Peter and now his uncle who know all the details. Naturally I was going to jump to the conclusion it was from Freddy, but I suppose it could be from someone I haven’t thought of, or it’s possible that it was delivered to me by mistake. I have no idea who the man was, and he could have handed it to the wrong person – it could have been meant for someone else entirely.’

‘Yes, that’s the problem,’ Kitty said gently but firmly. ‘There’s just not enough evidence to go on at the moment. You don’t want to be adding two and two and making five.’