“There’s a woman at the door, says she’s you. Even talks like you. Has a little boy and a whole pile of suitcases with her.”
“What?” She scrambled up from the lounge chair, wrapping a towel around herself as if it could shield her.
“Yes, ma’am. She says she’s Audrey Barrett and the little boy is the missus’s grandson. Says we’re expecting her.”
Oh no! No, no, no! Fear tingled down her spine and raised the hair on her arms. The same stunned feeling that came seconds after a bomb detonated. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.
“Didn’t know what to do,” Nell said, “so I say for her and the boy to come inside and wait.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She swallowed and finally found her voice. “I’ll talk to her, Nell. Will you get Robbie out of the pool and bring him inside?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She hurried into the house barefoot, a fist of dread punching her stomach. It can’t be. Please, God . . . this can’t be happening. She halted in the hallway and peered into the foyer—and there she stood. Her best friend. Her worst fear. She held a small, dark-haired boy by the hand. She had been peeking into the home’s formal living room, where Nell had been vacuuming, but turned and saw her. Her friend’s eyes widened with shock. “Eve! What in the world are you doing in America?” She took a step forward as if they might embrace, then halted.
It shook Eve to hear her real name spoken again. Her heart thudded. How she wished she could shove this intruder out the door and return to a quiet afternoon beside the pool, to the life she had lived for nearly four years. Instead, she planted her hands on her hips, pretending to be brave as she had so many times before. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought my son to America to meet his father’s family. . . . They live here, don’t they?” She looked at the envelope in her hand as if to be sure. “This . . . this is their address . . .”
The back door slammed. A moment later, the maid came in with Robbie, still wearing his plastic floating ring, dripping water on the parquet floor. “Everything all right, ma’am?” Nell asked, looking from one to the other.
“Everything’s fine.” She led Nell toward the living room, speaking quietly. “We were flatmates during the war.”
“Why she saying she’s you?”
“I think you may have misunderstood. I’ll fix my friend a glass of iced tea and then she’ll be leaving.”
“What about all them suitcases? You want Ollie to fetch them inside for her?”
“Never mind about the luggage. Please, continue with your vacuuming, Nell.” She waited for her to go, then turned to her son. “Robbie, please take this little boy to your playroom for a few minutes.”
“But I wasn’t done swimming.”
“We’ll go back in the pool after these people leave.” And they had to leave. She watched him trudge off to the first-floor playroom, battling to control her panic, then gestured for her former friend to follow her into the kitchen. The boy clung to his mother as if they were glued together. Eve fetched two glasses from the cupboard, pulled an aluminum ice cube tray from the freezer, and yanked on the lever to release the cubes. Her damp fingers stuck to the cold metal. She remembered the day the workmen found an unexploded bomb across the street from their London flat, how it had lain there in secret for months, waiting. That was the power of secrets. Even the most carefully hidden one could explode when you least expected, demolishing the wall of lies you’d constructed around it. But she would find a way to defuse this bombshell. She wouldn’t let it destroy the life she’d rebuilt, the home she had found for her son.
She poured tea into the glasses and sat down at the kitchen table, studying her friend for a moment. She was still pretty at age thirty-one with porcelain skin and amber hair, still trim and shapely. Her friend had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, as they said, but the war had tarnished all those spoons. What mattered now was how to get rid of her. She had barely taken a sip of her iced tea or calmed her fears enough to devise a plan when Robbie slouched into the kitchen again, his baggy, wet swimsuit still dripping.
“I’m hot, Mommy. Can we go back in the pool now?”
“I’d like you to play with your new friend for a few minutes.”
“He won’t come with me.” Eve took a good look at the boy’s thick, dark hair, his coal-black eyes, and the tiny cleft in his little chin, and her heart raced faster. Anyone with two eyes would be able to see how much he resembled his father. She needed to get him and his mother out of this house before Mrs. Barrett returned. Eve pushed back her chair and stood.