Page 117 of The Last Night in London

I felt my cheeks heating, but before I could defend myself, he said, “I brought toast and jam, by the way. I thought you might be hungry.”

“Ravenous—thank you.” I lifted off the silver domed lid and took a slice of thickly cut brown bread for my plate. We both spent a moment slathering black currant jam on our toast and eating; then I reached into my backpack again and pulled out the purse, and placed it next to the array of cut photographs.

I stood, sipping my coffee, washing down the toast and jam, my gaze wandering to the pile of drawings on the corner of the table. “What are those?” I asked.

He wiped his fingers on a napkin from the tray and picked up the stack to move it. “Just a hobby of mine.”

“A hobby?” I said, putting a hand on his arm so I could get a better look. “Did you draw all of these?”

“I did,” he said.

“You’re pretty good, you know. They look like they were done by a professional architect.”

He frowned. “Doubtful, but thank you. Nana is actually the one who got me started. She bought me my first drafting set when I was very small. Happily, I seemed to have an affinity for it.”

I took one of the pictures from the pile. It was a drawing of a house that had more windows than walls, with wraparound decking and a gabled roof that would allow for soaring ceilings inside.

“It looks like a beach house,” I said.

“That’s because it is. Besides taking me to see the great architectural masterpieces of London, Nana talked about the house she wanted me to build for her, should I one day become an architect. This is what I came up with.”

“It’s lovely,” I said, imagining I could hear the shrieks of gulls and see the blue reflections of sky in the wide windows. “This is all better than a hobby, Colin. You never thought of architecture as a career?”

“Not really. Even when we were children, Jeremy was always so much better at this than I was. Mother still has some of the drawingsof buildings he made as a child, and they show so much promise—much more than I had at the same age. I suppose, as I grew into adulthood, I always thought of it as his career choice, not mine. Since I was better at maths than he was, I followed a different route.”

He seemed uncomfortable under my gaze and turned to place the stack of drawings on top of the small table by the chair. “So, what is it that you had to show me so bright and early?”

“A few things.” I opened the purse, then placed the ivory dolphin, brooch, and lace handkerchief on the desk. “The handkerchief has Graham’s monogram, so I’m going to assume it’s his. But the purse belonged to both Precious and Eva, so it’s impossible to determine who this all belonged to without asking Precious.”

Colin picked up the brooch, rolling it between his long fingers. “From Graham?”

“Again, I can only speculate. But since he was RAF, it would make sense.”

He examined the dolphin, then watched as I pulled out the five envelopes.

“These don’t appear to have been opened. And they’re all addressed to Graham. Which raises the question of whether they were never delivered to him, or if he chose not to open them.”

His eyes met mine. “And you didn’t steam them open.”

“Definitely not,” I said, attempting to sound as offended as I felt, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to me more than once. “It was bad enough that I opened her purse. If I opened sealed letters, I’d be in a fine pickle trying to explain it to her.”

“A fine pickle?”

“It wouldn’t be good. My mama would probably come down from heaven and open up a can of whoop ass on me for reading someone else’s letters.”

“That’s a bad thing, then?”

“Very. Mama wouldn’t appreciate being called down from her fluffy cloud, where she’s probably listening to her favorite eighties music, so let’s leave those letters be until we can ask Precious about them.”

The corner of his mouth quirked as if he wanted to smile. “All right. But why did you bring these?” He pointed to the framed photographs.

I picked up one and handed the other to him. We took them out of their frames and placed the photos flat on the table. “Something has been bothering me, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. I thought I should look at all these photographs to see if I’m right.”

“Right about what?”

“Look,” I said, studying David and Sophia’s wedding photo. “Here’s the only photo we can find of Precious and Eva together—well, sort of, since we don’t see them both clearly. Remember all those empty spots in the wedding album? Remember how we thought that someone had deliberately removed photographs? I can’t help but wonder if they were photos of the two women together since this is the only one I could find.”

Our eyes met again, but neither of us said anything.