Dad opens the thermos and pours out some tea, steam rising from the black liquid and dissipating into the cool air. He pours a second mug for me and when he passes it to me, I warm my hands around the metal. When he’s still again, I ask hesitantly, “This new project…it’s related to the SOE?”
“I almost died, you see. Something went awry on a mission, I think. There was the head injury and…well, I was shot—” He rubs his left shoulder absentmindedly.
“You always said that scar was from the car accident…”
“You first asked me about that scar when we were swimming at this very beach when you were three or four years old. Exactly how truthful do you think I should have been, even if I was ready to talk about it at the time, which I was not? Besides, from what I remember, there was some kind of car accident. I just happened to be shot at the same time. I think.”
I’m trying to appear calm now because it’s clear this isn’t easy for Dad to talk about, but my heart is racing and it’s increasingly difficult to contain my shock. “I can’t believe you never told us this.”
“It was complicated. It is complicated,” he says hesitantly. “I woke up in a hospital bed. I had a hole in my shoulder and a skull fracture—my brain was all but scrambled. I had a sense that I was British, and I knew the war was raging, but I had no idea why I was in France. All the nurses could tell me was that my ‘friend’ Remy brought me in and saved my life.”
“Who was Remy?”
“That’s just the thing—I had no idea at first. I didn’t even know my own name right at the start. Many memories returned eventually, but even now, I look back at the war years through a thick mental fog. In time, I became reasonably certain Remy was an agent like me. But if I’m right about that, there’s a good chance I never knew his real name.”
“You’re going to try to track this Remy down?”
“Everything I’ve enjoyed in this life in the years since then—marrying your mum, the honor of being her husband for decades, being Dad to you and Archie, even being little Poppy’s grandfather… I’d have missed all of it but for this Remy. You and Archie and even Poppy might never have been born. Isn’t that strange to think of it like that? This man’s actions changed the course of all of our lives and I have no idea who he was. After so many years, maybe the best I can do is lay some flowers on his grave, or make sure his family knows what he did for me. But I need to do it. I need to try to find him.”
“But…why now, Dad?”
“It’s like I said: life moved on so quickly after the war. First I had to focus on my recovery from that head injury and that really was a full-time job. Even once I found my feet, it was better…so much easier…to avoid examining those years too closely. The downside is that there are things about my own past I don’t know and plenty of things I don’t understand. I’d like to change that and I just have an inkling that Remy is the key to it all. I’ve set myself a real challenge because I’m not even sure where to start, but having a goal has left me feeling much more myself, even if I’m not sure how to achieve it.”
“I’m glad, Dad. Maybe I need to find a project of my own,” I say, but then slump. Even thinking about finding a new project is too exhausting for me. The way Dad glances at me tells me he understands.
“Only when you’re ready, Lottie. I’m sorry to tell you that grief is forever, but the acute phase does ease—in its own time. I just wanted to remind you today that your mother knew we all adored her. She wouldn’t have needed us to stay miserable to prove it.”
I look down at Wrigley and my gaze sticks on the scar on his left front shoulder—where his leg used to connect to his torso. I always feel a pinch in my chest when I see that scar. Wrigley lost more than a limb that morning.
The dog looks up at me then rises, pushing himself effortlessly onto his three paws. He bends to stretch, wobbling just a little on that single front leg, then sprints down to the water’s edge, where he splashes his front foot in the water and gives a bark of joy.
“Hi, Aunt Kathleen. It’s Charlotte.”
I’m home from the beach, and Dad has retired to his study to start work on his project, but I have one last task left to do before I turn in myself. I invited Mum’s sister, my aunt Kathleen, to join us for the picnic. She said she was too busy with end-of-year work at the girls’ college where she’s headmistress and maybe there’s some truth in that, but it’s not the whole truth. Since Mum died, Aunt Kathleen is busy just about every time I invite her somewhere unless I make it clear the invitation is just for the two of us. She and Dad have always had an odd relationship and I suspect she doesn’t want me to be put in the position of buffer, as Mum so often was.
“How was your picnic?” she asks me now. She sounds miserable, and I wonder if I should have made the effort to visit her alone after the picnic instead of calling. She and Mum were so close. Kathleen is as heartbroken over Mum’s loss as Dad and I am.
The whole reason I chose Formby Beach for the picnic today was that many of my happiest childhood memories of Mum are from Saturdays there. We’d throw the family dog into the car and we’d drive, the radio blaring and the windows down, wind in our hair and smiles on our faces, to meet Aunt Kathleen in the parking lot. She and Mum would often walk so they could gossip or brainstorm some school issue in privacy, while Dad supervised me and Archie as we paddled in the water or played in the sand. Afterward, we’d sit on a blanket together and share fish and chips, just as Dad and I did today. Despite the ever-present hint of friction between her and Dad, Kathleen is a branch of our family and the distance between us now just feels wrong.
“How are you holding up?” I ask her gently.
“I should be asking you that question, Charlotte,” she sighs. I can’t answer her honestly, so I lie and tell her what she needs to hear.
“I’m okay,” I say, then I force a positivity I don’t feel. “The ‘firsts’ are hard, but we’ve survived her first birthday without her now. Next year will be easier.”
“Hmm,” she says noncommittally. “And Noah?”
“He’s doing a little better, actually.” It strikes me that Kathleen has known Dad for as long as Mum did. “Did you know Dad was in the SOE, Aunt Kathleen?”
She sucks in a breath and seems startled as she says, “I…well, yes. I did.” There’s a pause before she adds cautiously, “Why do you ask?”
“He never told me and Archie.”
“I know that. I’m curious how you know now.”
“Dad told me he’s starting a project to try to find some man who helped him when he was in France—” I say, but I’ve barely finished the sentence when Kathleen says abruptly, “Your mother would have hated that.”
My eyebrows lift in surprise.
“Dad just says he wants to focus on something else. Something other than his grief for Mum.”
“Geraldine was always adamant that the war years were best left forgotten,” Kathleen says stiffly. “She was a wise woman, Charlotte.”