“Because Guernsey was invaded?”
He looked at me strangely, as if I’d said something nonsensical. “No,” he said, “she wasn’t there when the Germans came.”
“She wasn’t in hospital?”
He brought his hands up to his face, pressing his fingertips against his forehead. “Morwenna died, Alice.”
“Oh, Jack . . . I . . .” The words caught in my throat.
“She disappeared when she found out she was pregnant. I didn’t know she was expecting a baby—I just assumed she’d had enough of me. We hadn’t known each other very long. I met her one day when I was out fishing. She came swimming out from the beach at Porthleven.” He heaved out a sigh. “I’d gone out in the boat to escape what was going on at home. The family finances were at their lowest ebb, and my father had just been diagnosed with cancer. Morwenna drove the dark thoughts away. She dived under the boat and tugged the fishing line so hard I thought I’d hooked a whopper. Then she came up, laughing, and climbed aboard. We met as often as we could after that. But after a couple of months she vanished. I made inquiries at the place where she worked. They had no idea where she’d gone.
“Then a letter came, out of the blue. It was nearly two years later. And out fell that photograph.” He went silent, as still as a statue, his fingers glued to his forehead, as if the memory had paralyzed him. Then he said: “She wrote that Ned was mine, and that she hadn’t told me because she knew I couldn’t marry her. She said she’d gone to Guernsey because a friend of hers worked in one of the hotels on the island. Morwenna got a job there, too. But with the war, the work had dried up. She said she needed money.”
“What did you do?”
“I said I’d give her what she wanted if I could see our baby. I sailed over to the island on Firefly. She was waiting for me at the harbor, with Phyllis, her friend. When I’d seen Ned, Morwenna said she needed to talk. Phyllis said she’d take him for a walk while we went out to the boat.” He shook his head slowly. “It was low tide, so I’d anchored Firefly to a buoy out beyond the harbor. When we got into the tender, the wind was picking up. By the time we reached the boat, there was a swell running. I climbed out first, so I could help her up. But she slipped on the ladder.”
My hand went to my mouth. “That was how she died?”
His head dipped. It was an almost imperceptible nod—as if, even now, he found it hard to acknowledge what had happened. “I dived in after her, but I couldn’t see her. The water was murky—and it was so cold. I couldn’t swim against the swell. I had to give up.”
His fingers parted. I saw that his eyes were glassy with tears. What he’d told me was too shocking for words. It brought back all the horror of the attack on the Brabantia—the panic and the fear as the water pulled me under. I could imagine Jack’s desperation as he plunged beneath the waves, the blind terror of flailing about, unable to save her.
“The lifeboat went out looking for her. They searched for days. But her body was never found. After a week they told me to go home.”
“What about Ned? What happened to him?”
“I should have taken him with me, but I panicked. I couldn’t stomach trying to explain it all to my father. I paid Phyllis the money I was going to give to Morwenna—asked her to look after him until I’d worked out what to do. Then, a month later, the call came to evacuate all the children from the island.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “It was the perfect cover. I could bring him back to Penheligan. There was no need for anyone to know the truth.”
I remembered what Merle had said about the chaos in St. Peter Port on the day she left. It suddenly occurred to me that she might have been aware of what Jack was doing but had told me the version he had invented. “What about Merle?” I asked. “Does she know?”
He shook his head. “I sometimes wonder if she suspects. But she’s terribly loyal—she’s never said anything. She gets an allowance for looking after Ned. I told her it had to come via me, from the government fund for evacuees, and she’s never questioned that.”
“But what about Ned? Doesn’t he need to know?”
“Yes—one day. But he’s too young to be troubled by it now.”
I wasn’t sure about that. I thought of the time in the woods when Ned had asked me if I’d be his mummy. The child was desperate for parents of his own.
“It’s hard to think of the future,” Jack went on. “With this war, nobody can. When I went back to Guernsey that June of 1940, the only thing on my mind was to bring him somewhere safe.”