Page 102 of The Words Beneath the Noise

The street ahead looked like a mouth with missing teeth. Buildings I remembered, solid Victorian terraces that had stood for a century, were simply gone. In their place: rubble. Craters. Empty sky where rooflines should have been.

“I knew it was bad,” I said quietly. “But seeing it...”

“Different from reading reports.” Tom's voice was rough.

We walked on through streets I'd known as a child but that felt alien now. Past shops with boarded windows painted with festive scenes. Past queues for rations that stretched around corners. Past bomb sites where someone had strung Christmas garlands across the gaps, paper chains bright against grey rubble.

And everywhere, the strange beauty of survival. Flower sellers with carts of holly. Carollers outside tube stations. Children playing in cleared spaces that had once been homes.

“They're rebuilding,” I said, something catching in my throat.

“Course they are.” Tom's shoulder brushed mine. “That's what people do.”

The Pembrokes had movedto Knightsbridge after the bombing.

Not by choice. Our old house in Hampstead, the one I'd grown up in, the one with the garden where I'd lain on summer nights tracing constellations, was gone. A direct hit in the autumn of 1940. No one had been home, thank God. Dad had been at his office, Mum at a charity meeting, Bea staying with a friend. They'd returned to find nothing but a crater and the twisted remains of the piano that had sat in the front room for thirty years.

The new house was smaller. A terraced place on a quiet street, borrowed from a cousin who'd evacuated to the country. Not quite the Pembroke standard, Mum had written in her careful way, but adequate for the duration.

I stood on the pavement outside, heart hammering, fingers working the edge of my scarf.

“We don't have to do this,” Tom said quietly. He was standing close enough that I could feel his warmth, far enough that no passing stranger would think anything of it. “If you've changed your mind?—”

“I haven't.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I want them to know you. I want them to know me. The real me, not the version I've been pretending to be my whole life.”

“And if they don't react the way you hope?”

“Then at least I'll know.” I looked at him, found his blue eyes steady on mine. “I'm tired of being afraid, Tom. Tired of hiding. Whatever happens in there, at least it will be honest.”

He nodded slowly. Then, so quickly I almost missed it, his hand found mine and squeezed once before letting go.

I walked up the steps and knocked.

Bea opened the door.

She looked older than I remembered, though it had only been six months since I'd last seen her. Thinner, too, cheekbones sharp beneath skin that had lost its summer colour. But her eyes were the same. Bright and knowing and full of mischief.

“Art!” She threw herself at me before I could speak, arms wrapping around my neck, squeezing tight enough to make breathing difficult. “You absolute beast, you've been so mysterious in your letters, I've been dying of curiosity for weeks?—”

“Bea. Bea, I can't breathe.”

She released me, stepped back, and her gaze landed on Tom.

I watched her take him in. The uniform, worn but clean. The broad shoulders, the weathered face, the way he stood like a man expecting trouble. The slight nervousness in his expression that he was trying very hard to hide.

“So,” she said slowly. “This is him.”

“This is him. Tom, this is my sister Beatrice. Bea, this is Thomas Hale.”

Tom extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Pembroke.”

“Oh, none of that.” Bea ignored the hand and hugged him too, quick and fierce. Tom's startled expression almost made me laugh. “Anyone who makes my brother sound that happy in letters doesn't get called Miss Pembroke. It's Bea. And you're coming inside before you freeze to death on the doorstep.”

She dragged us both into the narrow hallway, chattering the whole way. The house smelled of baking and coal smoke and something floral that was probably Mum's perfume. Smaller than our old home, yes, but filled with familiar things. The grandfather clock that had somehow survived the bombing,rescued from the rubble by a neighbour. Photographs on the walls. Dad's medical books stacked on a side table.

“Mum! Dad! They're here!”

Footsteps from the back of the house. And then my mother appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on an apron, and all the breath left my body.