Page 149 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Your family has a very strange way of showing affection.”

“I told you. Strange family.” I pressed closer to him, feeling his arm come around my shoulders. “She's right, though. You are stuck with us now.”

“Terrible fate.”

“The worst.”

“However will I cope.”

“I'm sure you'll manage.”

We divided the biscuits between us, rationing them out of habit even though rationing had officially ended months ago. They were buttery and sweet and tasted like peacetime, like the slow return to abundance we were all still learning to trust.

Outside, church bells chimed the hour. Six o'clock. Darkness had fallen properly now, street lamps casting pools of yellow light on the snowy pavement. Somewhere down the block someone was playing carols on a piano, the tinny sound drifting through thin walls.

“We should go out,” Tom said suddenly. “Walk. See the city.”

I looked at him, taking in the restless energy that sometimes seized him when he'd been cooped up too long. Tom needed movement, needed to feel the ground under his feet and the cold air in his lungs. Old instincts from years of patrolling and guarding and never quite being able to sit still.

“All right,” I agreed. “But I'm wearing every jumper I own. It's freezing.”

“Soft,” Tom teased, but he was already pulling on his coat, the heavy wool one he'd bought from a surplus shop with his last army pay.

I layered on jumpers and a scarf, the dark blue one my mother had knitted that still smelled faintly of her perfume, and we headed out into the winter night.

London had changed. Rebuilding was everywhere, scaffolding covering bombed-out buildings, new construction rising from old rubble. But it was still London, still familiar in the way that mattered. The curve of the streets, the sound of traffic, the mix of accents on every corner. We walked without destination, hands buried in pockets, shoulders occasionally bumping in a way that could pass for accidental.

“Do you ever think about them?” I asked as we passed a newsagent with headlines about Marshall Plan aid. “Ruth. Noor. The others.”

“All the time.” Tom's breath misted in the cold air. “Ruth sent a postcard last month, remember? She's in Paris, working with refugee organisations.”

“And Noor?”

“Last I heard she was in India. Went back after independence.” Tom smiled. “She sent that photograph. The one with her in a sari, laughing.”

I remembered. We'd pinned it to the kitchen wall, a splash of colour in our drab flat. Noor looked radiant, free in a way she'd never quite been at the estate.

“What about the others? Mrs Parker, Dr Hart?”

“Mrs Parker retired to Cornwall with her sister. Dr Hart's at a London hospital, still terrifying medical students.” Tom paused at a corner, checking for traffic with the automatic caution of someone who'd seen too many accidents. “Finch is still alive, far as I know. Heard he took a desk job in Surrey. Quiet life.”

Finch. I hadn't thought about him in months. The man who'd nearly cost us everything with his caution, who'd been buried under rubble and pulled out alive and diminished. We'd seen him once after demobilisation, a chance encounter on a train platform. He'd looked smaller in civilian clothes, older, and he'd nodded to us with something that might have been respect or shame or both.

“Do you forgive him?” I asked.

Tom considered this. “Don't know if forgiveness is the right word. I understand him better now. Fear makes people cruel. Makes them stupid.” He looked at me, eyes serious. “But he also signed off on our demobilisation papers without question. Could have made things difficult. Didn't.”

“So we owe him?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he owed us.” Tom shrugged. “Either way, it's done.”

We walked on, passing pubs spilling warm light and laughter onto the pavement, passing shops with window displays of tinsel and holly, passing a group of children throwing snowballs and shrieking with joy. Normal sounds. Peacetime sounds.

At a corner near Trafalgar Square, Tom stopped abruptly. “Art. Look.”

He was pointing at a newspaper vendor's board. The headline read:Secret Codebreakers Finally Honoured: Bletchley Park's Role in Allied Victory Revealed.

My heart kicked. We'd known this was coming, the slow declassification of Ultra intelligence, but seeing it in print was different. Validation. Proof that what we'd done mattered, had helped end the war, had saved lives.