Page 105 of Never Tear Us Apart

‘Wrangled an hour or two off to see you before the next big show later,’ he explains when I let him in.

Sal is sitting in the corner writing down everything he can remember from his visit to 2025 into his notebook. When he sees Danny, he waves a greeting, then gets up and takes himself into the kitchen.

‘You must be tired,’ I tell him.

‘Not yet. Tomorrow, when all this is over and those boats have steamed into harbour, then I’ll be tired. One last push, Maia. We get the fuel and the food, and the siege is over. The war might go on, but things will get a hell of a lot better round here.’

‘And what are your orders?’ I ask him.

‘Well, I can’t tell you exactly, but you can assume I’ll be up there trying to pick off the bombers while the Axis pilots try to pick me off.’

‘And if you get hit, you eject, right?’ I say.

‘Maia,’ Danny says. ‘Why all the questions now?’

‘Humour me?’ I ask him. ‘It makes me feel better to understand all the steps.’

‘If I’m hit, and there’s no chance of landing the Spit, then I’ll eject. But if I can get her down, I will. Ejecting right intothe middle of an air battle and a gunfight ain’t always the best idea.’

‘So you’d try to land at the airfield?’

‘That’s the best way, if I can reach it. They got fire crews, ambulances, doctors.’

‘And, say you land, but it’s like the other day, and you can’t open your cockpit, and this time for some reason, you can’t kick your way out, what then?’

‘The erks will get me out,’ Danny says calmly. ‘There’s an emergency catch right on top of the hood – looks like two screws. You pull it up, and it releases the canopy. Then they’ll cut my belts and haul me out. They are pros, these guys, Maia. It’s all been thought through, I promise you, right down to the last detail.’

‘Right down to the last detail,’ I repeat.

‘And what about you, when it all kicks off? You’ll get to the shelter, right?’

‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘I’ll be safe.’

‘Good.’ He smiles at me. ‘I have to go back, Stitches.’

‘Already?’

Our arms wind around each other.

‘We will see each other again,’ Danny promises me. ‘I know it. So you believe it, you hear me?’

‘I do,’ I tell him. ‘I do.’

We kiss, and in that kiss, there is a lifetime – decades of the lives we long to live together, bound and sealed with the vows our bodies make.

‘Stay alive,’ Danny whispers as he lets me go.

‘Stay alive,’ I tell him.

He smiles, and then he’s gone.

* * *

After Danny leaves – and it takes every fibre of courage I have in my bones to let him go – Sal and I wait, the only two people in the world who know exactly what we are waiting for.

It feels like there should be a lot to say, but we are mostly silent. We sit side by side, my hand in his, waiting for the hour to arrive, the time when we need to leave to meet our fates. Neither of us needs to say that the other has saved them, given them a family when they’d given up hope of one. Neither of us needs to say that we don’t want the other to go – that we want each other to change our minds and stay alive. Both of us know we can’t do that.

Sal watches the clock standing in the hall, and he must have decided the time is right. He hands me a letter in an envelope.