only two reasons why he ever came to Beaufort Gardens. One was that all his worldly goods – all that remained of them – had been brought here from the bombed-out cottage in Sussex; the other was the presence of his sixteen-year-old sister Eileen, on whom he doted. She was kind, interesting, lovely to look at and wise beyond her years, and quite how she had managed to become so under their father’s roof was something that Farnham was at a loss to explain. But she had. Living proof, he thought, that children had a much bigger say in how they turned out than their parents liked to believe.
He covered the last few yards and rapped on the door with the heavy knocker. Norton answered, looking every one of his seventy-three years, and ushered him inside with the usual lack of friendliness. ‘Your father has left for the office, Mr Robert,’ he said stiffly. ‘Mrs Farnham has not yet come down.’
Fuck them, Farnham thought. ‘My sister?’ he asked.
‘She is at breakfast,’ Norton said, but at that moment Eileen burst through the door at a run, a huge smile on her face.
‘Robbie!’ she cried happily, throwing her arms round his neck.
After a while they disengaged and he got a better look at her. She seemed older, he thought, though it had been only a couple of months since he last saw her. Her clothes seemed drabber than usual, but the eyes were as bright as ever.
‘Let’s go out,’ she said. ‘I’ve got two hours – we can go for a walk in the park.’
‘All right,’ he said, glad of the excuse to get out of the house before his stepmother appeared.
It took Eileen only a moment to grab a coat and they were out on the street, walking briskly across the Brompton Road and heading up Montpelier Street. ‘What are you doing in two hours?’ he asked. ‘Shopping with one of your friends, I suppose,’ he added with a grin.
‘Shopping! Where have you been? There’s nothing in the shops to buy. And I have to go to work,’ she said triumphantly.
He was suitably astonished. ‘You’ve got a holiday job?’
‘In the East End. I’m a volunteer. Oh, Robbie, it’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. I’m helping in this shelter for people who’ve been bombed out of their homes. It’s run by a clergyman named Tim and two old ladies.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Everything. Cook, clean, visit people, help people sort out problems, try to trace missing relatives…’ She giggled. ‘I even helped Tim write his sermon last week.’
Farnham laughed. ‘You were an atheist last time we talked.’
‘I still am. But Tim says it doesn’t matter as long as your heart’s in the right place.’
‘Right,’ Farnham said drily. ‘You’re not sweet on this clergyman by any chance?’
‘He’s older than Father,’ she said indignantly. ‘And anyway I don’t have time to be sweet on anyone. Oh, Robbie, I’m so glad you’re here because I need a big favour.’
He sighed. ‘And what might that be?’
She kept him waiting for an answer until they were safely across Knightsbridge. ‘I don’t want to go back to school until after the war’s over,’ she said as they entered Hyde Park. ‘I’m much more useful where I am. And I’m learning so much more!’
‘Yes?’ Farnham asked, knowing full well what was coming.
‘So will you talk to Father for me?’ she pleaded.
‘I’ll try, but I doubt he’ll listen.’
‘Just soften him up for me, then I’ll move in for the kill.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, Eileen,’ he warned her.
She turned her blue eyes on him. ‘I won’t. But I have to ask, don’t I?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he agreed. Something in the way she said it set off an alarm bell in his mind, but she left him no time to think it through.
‘So what are you doing?’ she asked.
They had reached the edge of the Serpentine. ‘Playing Cowboys and Indians in the Scottish hills,’ he said wryly. ‘Getting ready for the big day, like everyone else.’
‘And when will it be?’
He grunted. ‘You’d better ask Churchill that. Or Eisenhower.’
‘It’ll be soon though, won’t it?’
‘I should think so.’
‘And you’ll be part of it?’ She sounded worried now.
‘Me and a million others,’ he said lightly, but she wasn’t to be put off so easily.
‘Robbie,’ she said, ‘I know it’s been awfully hard for you. Since Catherine died, I mean. And I know you can’t bear the thought of working for Father when all this is over, but there are lots of other things you could do.’
‘I know,’ he said. For some reason he felt close to tears.
‘I suppose I’m being really selfish,’ she went on, ‘but I need my brother and I just want you to be careful.’
He put an arm round her shoulder and squeezed. ‘I promise I will,’ he said.
By the time McCaigh had taken the Circle Line to Liverpool Street and the LNER stopping service to Stoke Newington he felt as though he’d seen enough trains to last him several lifetimes. Three hundred and sixty miles in twenty-four hours, he told himself as he took the short cut through Abney Park cemetery. Fifteen miles an hour. He had always been good at arithmetic.
His mum’s welcome more than made up for the rigours of the journey. She plied him with another breakfast – his Uncle Derek had apparently been present when certain items fell off a lorry in nearby Dalston – and went through all the local gossip. One family they all knew in Kynaston Street had been killed by a direct hit only a couple of weeks before.
‘Has it been bad?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘Nothing like the real Blitz. And everything’s much better organized these days. We quite enjoy it down the shelter these days, what with bingo and all that. Or at least your dad and I do. When the siren goes Patrick’s usually nowhere to be found.’
‘He’s at school now, isn’t he?’
She shrugged. ‘Supposed to be, but I doubt it. He’s been helping out with the fire wardens lately – real proud of himself, he is. He must have lied about his age – either that or your mate Terry took pity on him. At least it’s stopped him moaning on and on about how the war’s going to end before he has the chance to join up. Way he talks you’d think it was like being in the films. And I don’t want you encouraging him, either,’ she added with a threatening look.
‘I won’t,’ he promised.
She believed him. ‘When you came home last time I thought you were keeping something back, but I didn’t like to pry.’
‘Nah,’ he said, ‘not really. We were on this op in Italy – eight of us – and four got killed. Felt a bit close to home, I suppose.’
‘Not surprised.’ She got up to pour them both another cup of tea. ‘Bloody Eyeties,’ she muttered as she put the cosy back over the teapot.
He laughed. ‘Matter of fact it was Eyeties who helped the rest of us escape from the bloody Krauts,’ he told her.
She looked at him. ‘But you’re all right?’
‘Yeah, you know me.’ He changed the subject. ‘How’s Dad?’
‘He’s at work, if you can call gazing at trees work.’ Donal McCaigh was the head park keeper at nearby Clissold Park. He’d been a trainee teacher