Into the Darkest Day: An emotional and totally gripping WW2 historical novel

by Kate Hewitt

  Lily let out a groan, cursing her own cowardice. She wasn’t brave, and she never had been, not like Sophie. It had been Sophie who had waded into the deeper water while Lily had splashed in the shallows, on their summer trips to Brighton. Sophie who had accepted the dare to stick out her tongue at one of the boys at school, or throw a snowball at the milk float one icy winter. Sophie who had come downstairs in bright red lipstick when she was fourteen, and her mother hadn’t made her wash it off, even though Lily knew she hadn’t liked it one bit.

  But those were all just childish pranks, and Sophie was no longer a child. She was a woman, determined to live out her own destiny, and, right now, for better or worse, that seemed to include Lieutenant Tom Reese.

  Still, Lily told herself as she plumped her pillow, it wasn’t as if Sophie was being truly outrageous. She was simply slipping out to the pub. It wasn’t a big to-do at all. And yet, when she recalled that manic glitter in her sister’s eye, Lily suspected that, in some strange way, tonight had the power to change everything.

  She tried to wait up for Sophie’s return, and managed to well after the pub had closed, but at some point after midnight Lily fell asleep, only to wake to the dreaded and far too familiar wail of the air-raid siren, its rising and falling sound as plaintive and distressing as a woman’s heartbroken cry.

  She rose and dressed with hurried, automatic movements, the room a sea of black all around her as she fumbled for her dress and thrust her legs into the heavy lisle stockings she wore for work. She couldn’t even see Sophie’s bed, but she sensed her sister’s absence, and as she went to the door, she ran her hand along the length of the mattress, only to find it cold and empty as she’d expected, yet even so her stomach clenched in fear.

  “Sophie? Lily?” Her mother’s disembodied voice called out to her in the darkness.

  “I’m here.” Even if her sister wasn’t. Her parents clearly hadn’t realized that yet.

  Silently, the only light a flickering candle her father held, they all headed downstairs in single file, her mother first, followed by her father, and then her. Then out to the back garden, the siren still wailing, the air frigid and damp, the muddy ground squelching beneath their feet as they trod the well-worn path to the shelter.

  Four years ago, when they’d first erected the Anderson shelter, and the government had distributed a little booklet about how to make it comfortable, they’d all approached the exercise with something almost like enthusiasm, or at least a determination not to let the constant raids get them down.

  Lily’s father had built metal bunks, and her mother had stuffed mattresses and sewn sleeping bags. She’d even kept a few books and games out there to while away the time, until they’d become damp and moldy.

  Yet sometime in the intervening years, enthusiasm had given way to grim endurance. As night after night had passed with droning planes and thudding bombs, as smoke-filled dawns broke with the charred smell of destruction, the once-familiar landscape now cratered and littered with rubble, women standing in the streets clutching their babies, looking blank-eyed and dazed, any sense of optimistic purpose had drained away.

  Now no one spoke as they filed into the cramped shelter, the sleeping bags icy, a smell of mildew hanging in the air, everyone anticipating another uncomfortable and mostly sleepless night. In the distance, they heard the thuds of the first bombs falling, none close enough yet to be too worrisome, yet somewhere, Lily knew, someone’s house was being hit, someone’s life was being destroyed. Please God, not Sophie’s.

  Once, after a particularly brutal raid, she had walked past a bombed house and trod on a mud-splattered book; when she’d bent down, she’d seen it was a wedding album with photos carefully pasted on its stiff cardboard pages, and the sight of it had made her want to cry. Lily had picked it up and given it to her mother, to give to someone at the WVS, but who knew whether it had found its way to its owner, or if there had been anyone left who still treasured it.

  Lily shut down the door of the shelter as Carol blew out the candle and Richard lit the lantern they kept there. In its paltry light, Carol’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s Sophie?” Her voice was sharp.

  Richard’s eyes widened as he looked around the small, gloomy space, realizing for the first time that their oldest daughter was not present.

  “She’s out,” Lily said. Her voice sounded thin.

  “Out?”

  “She went out.” Lily didn’t know how much more she should say.

  Her father stared at her blankly, while Carol looked utterly incredulous. “When?”

  A whistling sound split the air, and everyone tensed, eyes wide as they waited for it to land. The thud was enough to shake the corrugated-iron sides of the shelter, and the lantern Richard had set between the bunks flickered and then steadied.

  “She’s out in this?” Carol’s voice wavered.

  Another thud sounded nearer then, followed by a crash. The lantern flickered and went out.

  “Dear God,” Carol whispered in the dark. “Dear God.”

  Richard fumbled with the lantern and lit it again. In the dim, wavering glow, everyone’s faces looked like pale, frightened moons.

  “She’ll be all right,” Lily said, her voice just as thin as before, although she’d meant to sound bracing. “She’ll go to the Underground station. Loads of people do…”

  “And do you remember when a bomb fell on the line, and broke through to Balham station? Two hundred people sleeping on the platforms were drowned.”

  Lily looked down at her lap, biting her lips, saying nothing.

  “Where is she, Lily?” Carol sounded as scolding as she had when Lily was a little girl. Her lips were pursed tightly. “Because it is clear to me that you know where she went, and who with.”

  “She went to meet Lieutenant Reese,” Lily whispered. There was no question of keeping it secret any longer.

  “Lieutenant Reese!” Carol’s lips tightened further, drawn up like the strings of a purse. “I should have known.”

  “They were just going to the pub, the one by the Common. Just for a drink.”

  “It is one o’clock in the morning,” Carol returned. “They have certainly not been at the pub all this time.”

  “She’s a grown woman, Carol,” Richard said quietly. “Twenty-three last October. She’s bound to…” He trailed off as another whistling hummed through the air, followed by a thud close enough for them to hear the sound of breaking glass.

  “I know she’s a grown woman,” Carol snapped. “But grown women can, and should, act with dignity and self-respect.”

  “It was just the pub,” Lily said a bit desperately.

  “The pub shut three hours before the bombing started,” Carol cut across her. “Who knows where she is now!”

  A silence descended on the cramped space, interspersed with the whistling and thuds of the bombs raining down outside. At least they didn’t sound so close now, but who knew where the next one would land.

  “She’ll be all right,” Richard said, laying a clumsy hand on his wife’s arm. “We can’t wrap her in cotton wool all her life—”

  “I hardly want to do that.”

  “Lieutenant Reese seemed like a good lad,” Richard persisted. “He meant well.”

  “Did he?”

  Another silence fell, this one suffocating. The bombs continued, a symphony of thuds in the distance that they were all trying to ignore.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Richard said finally. “We all have work in the morning.”

  Lily stretched out on her bunk, cringing at the cold, damp sleeping bag and trying not to shiver. Richard had turned off the lantern and the darkness was so impenetrable, she could not see her own hand in front of her face. She felt as if she were entombed, as if the earth on top of the shelter was pressing down on her. It was hard to breathe, and she tried to concentrate on each breath she took, evenly in, evenly out, doing her best not to think about Sophie or where she might be.

  She’d had to re
peat this little exercise every night she’d spent in the dark and damp little shelter. She’d managed to hide her panic from her family, but she’d always dreaded the time inside the shelter, more even than the bombs whistling outside. She hated not being able to see, despised the way the walls felt as if they were coming closer, bathing her body in an icy sweat that had nothing to do with the chilled air or the damp sleeping bag. In the silence, her breathing sounded ragged, and images of Sophie caught out, the bombs falling around her, kept flashing through her mind.

  “Do be quiet, Lily,” Carol said crossly.

  Lily pressed her lips together and turned on her side. Another thud rattled the sides of the shelter. She didn’t sleep.

  The long, flat sound of the all-clear rousted them from an unsettled doze at six o’clock in the morning. It was still dark outside, the clouds floating in shreds across a scarred and livid sky. The smell of smoke clung to everything, along with another, indefinable smell of destruction that Lily didn’t like to think about too closely. Sophie was still gone.

  In silence, they headed back to the house, Richard to inspect for damage and Carol to make tea. Lily stood uncertainly in the kitchen as her mother filled the kettle.

  “She’ll be back,” she said, needing to convince both herself and her mother.

  Carol did not reply. The back she presented to Lily was rigid with both anxiety and affront.

  If something happened to Sophie, Lily realized in that moment, it would be her fault. Never mind that Sophie had been determined to go out, or that Lily had tried to stop her, or that she was the younger one. It would still be her fault, and she realized she accepted that.

  She might be younger, quieter, shyer, but she was more responsible. She always had been, just as Sophie had always been braver. It was the way they had worked, from the time they’d been little girls in pinafores to now. Perhaps it would never change.

  The three of them were just sitting down to their morning oatmeal and tea when the front door opened and Sophie’s voice sang out merrily, as if she were coming in from a day at work rather than a night on the street.

  “Hell-o!”

  Relief shot through Lily even as she tensed at the sound of Sophie’s jolly voice, while Carol rose from the table.

  “Where,” she asked, her voice both shaking and cold, “have you been?”

  Sophie stopped in the doorway of the kitchen, taking in her mother’s fury, her father’s silence. Lily saw that her hair was in disarray, her makeup smeared. Even worse, beneath her open coat, her blouse was buttoned up wrong. She wondered if her mother noticed.

  “I was caught by the air raid,” Sophie said. “I spent the night in the Clapham Common Tube station. It was ever so fun, actually. Everyone was singing! It felt like a party.” She laughed, but no one else did. No one else even smiled.

  “You snuck out to see that Lieutenant Reese?” Carol said.

  Sophie darted a look at Lily, who gave a grimace of apology.

  “That Lieutenant Reese?” Sophie raised her eyebrows. “What have you got against him?”

  “He seemed a bit fast to me.”

  “Fast! Just because he’s American, I suppose? Except it can’t be that, because you were fond enough of Sergeant Lawson when he brought that hamper by, weren’t you? Pushing him and Lily together. It was rather obvious, Mother.”

  Carol seemed to swell in front of them, her face flushed with outrage. “Sergeant Lawson has clearly been brought up well—”

  “So has Tom,” Sophie flashed. “You’ve only gone against him because I met him last night.”

  “Any decent boy wouldn’t—”

  “He’s not a boy, he’s a man,” Sophie cut across her mother, her voice hard. “A perfectly nice, grown-up man, and I’m a woman. I earn a respectable wage, and I do my duty for this wretched war. I can live as I like.” Each sentence felt like a grenade being hurled into the room, a line being drawn in the sand. There would be no going back to the way things had been—two girls laying the table, cups of tea by the wireless, everything predictable and stodgy and safe. A family together. Their whole way of life was at risk, everything she longed to keep hold of, and Lily couldn’t stand it. Everything else could be ruined—every house on Holmside Road, every letter of condolence in the wooden tray at work—but not this. Not this.

  “If you really mean that,” Carol said coldly, “then—”

  “Don’t,” Lily cried. “Don’t. It was just an evening out. You went to the pub, didn’t you, Sophie?”

  Sophie managed to look both contemptuous and relieved by Lily’s intervention. “Of course I did. I had a shandy and learned all about Tom’s family back in Minnesota. They’re dairy farmers, but he’d rather do something with apples. Not that you care.” This flung at Carol, who compressed her lips and said nothing.

  “Let’s not fall out,” Lily begged. “None of it matters. We’re all safe and sound, not even a window broken.” She glanced at her father for confirmation, who nodded emphatically.

  “Not so much as a crack this time. Not a single one.”

  “Please,” Lily said more quietly.

  A silence stretched on tautly while Sophie and Carol glared at each other. Then Carol nodded once, a jerk of her head more than anything else.

  “There’s still some tea left in the pot,” she said, and turned to the stove to fetch her oldest daughter some oatmeal.

  Chapter Ten

  ABBY

  Abby held onto Matthew Lawson’s medal for a whole day before she decided to tell Simon about it. She’d wanted to ask her dad about it first, but he’d been so quiet and she hadn’t wanted to admit she’d gone digging in the attic, which she feared he’d see as some sort of betrayal. She doubted he’d tell her anything about it, anyway.

  She’d thought about putting it back, tucking it in its handkerchief in the bottom of the trunk and forgetting all about it, but somehow that didn’t feel right, either. Who was Matthew Lawson—and what had he had to do with her grandfather?

  Yet what if telling Simon opened up a Pandora’s box of emotions and memories that made things even worse between her and her father? Could they even be worse?

  Abby called Simon. “I’ve found something,” she said after he’d answered his cell phone in his usual cheery way. “It might be nothing…”

  “And it might not. What is it?”

  “A medal. Another one, not a Purple Heart, though. But this one doesn’t belong to my grandfather.”

  Simon was silent for a moment, as he absorbed this news. “Who does it belong to?” he finally asked.

  “Someone called Matthew Lawson—Master Sergeant.”

  “You haven’t heard of him before?”

  “No, never. Have you?”

  “Not a thing.” Simon paused. “I don’t suppose you’ve asked your dad?” There was no censure in his voice, just a wry acknowledgment of the complexity of that relationship.

  “No, I haven’t.” Abby managed a shaky laugh. “And, to be honest, I don’t think I will. I know it seems weird, but that’s just how it is.”

  “It’s no weirder than what goes in any other family.” Simon was silent for a moment. “Look,” he said finally, “why don’t you bring it over?”

  “Over…” she repeated slowly. “Where?”

  “My little cabin at the lake. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m sitting right here looking at all this loveliness by myself. Bring it over and we can have a think about it all, maybe over a picnic? I’ve got plenty of food that needs to be eaten, and if you felt like bringing some lemonade, well, I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Oh…” A smile spread over Abby’s face as she realized how much she liked that idea.

  “That is, if you can get away? I know you must be busy with everything.”

  “It’s okay.” Tina was covering the shop, and balancing the books could wait. Again. “I’d love to come,” she said, and she heard the smile in Simon’s voice as he responded.

  “Brilliant. I’ll give y
ou the address for your phone. Bring Bailey, if you like.”

  An hour later, Abby was driving towards Lake Geneva, a thermos of fresh lemonade in the backseat, along with some homemade chocolate chip cookies she’d baked the day before, and the medal wrapped in the old silk handkerchief. She’d left Bailey at home, sprawled by the stove, looking like all she wanted was a nice, long snooze.

  The sun was shining and the day was baking hot, and nerves jangled in her stomach, along with an undeniable sense of excitement. This almost felt like a date. Maybe it was one. Maybe she could be crazy enough to consider it one, to act like it. Shannon would want her to. She imagined her friend’s exaggerated mic-drop moment. He invited you for a picnic? And you brought lemonade? When are you sending out the wedding announcements?

  Abby was still smiling as she spotted the sign for Holmwood Farm and turned up the dirt road, then parked the car by an old, weathered barn. The place had been easy to find, right off Route 12, between Big Foot Beach State Park and the town of Lake Geneva—a prime piece of property that developers would no doubt love to get their hands on, if the dairy farmer ever decided to sell up.

  She got her things out of the back and then headed across the grass to the small cabin, little more than a glorified shed with a tacked-on porch, that was only a dozen or so feet from the edge of the lake.

  She paused as she gazed at the lake shimmering beneath a cloudless sky, blue glinting under blue. In the distance, a motorboat skimmed along the water, and if she swam out past this little inlet, she knew she’d be able to see the large floats and cordoned-off areas of the town’s Riviera Beach, where her mom used to take her when she was little. Her and Luke, splashing, playing Marco Polo, lying on the little beach, their legs dusted with sand…

  Abby clamped down on that thought before she could let it take root, even though she knew that, of course, it already had. All the old memories were there in her mind already, burrowed deep. She just couldn’t let them spring up. Take over. Because she was afraid of what might happen if she did.