Page 5 of The Words Beneath the Noise

The same promise I'd made a hundred times before. The same promise I kept breaking.

But this time would be different. It had to be.

The snow began falling again, soft and steady, and somewhere in the distance a bell rang, calling the day shift to work. I turned my collar up against the cold and followed Davies toward whatever came next.

TWO

THE MAN IN HUT X

ART

Iwoke to the wrong light.

That was the first sign something had gone badly off course. The grey seeping through my attic skylight was too bright, too established, the kind of winter morning that had been happening for hours while I'd been lost in dreams I couldn't remember. My body knew before my mind caught up, that sick lurch of panic that came with the certainty that I'd failed at something fundamental again.

I'd overslept. Third time this week.

The thought propelled me upright so fast the room spun. Cold air hit my skin like punishment, and I was already cataloguing what I'd done wrong: stayed up too late working through the Tunny intercepts in my head, forgot to wind my alarm clock, got lost in the patterns dancing behind my eyes until exhaustion had dragged me under without permission.

Clothes. I needed clothes.

Yesterday's shirt was draped over the chair where I'd left it. Not ideal, but finding a clean one would require opening the wardrobe, which would require remembering where I'd put mylaundry, which would require executive function I simply did not possess at this hour. I pulled the shirt on, then trousers, then the cardigan with the hole in the left cuff that I kept meaning to mend. My tie was still knotted from yesterday, loose enough to slip over my head, which was the only reason I still wore ties at all.

Socks. Where were my socks?

I found a pair under the bed that might have been clean. Might not. I put them on anyway.

Shoes proved more difficult. One had migrated to the corner by the desk, the other was somehow behind the coal stove, and retrieving it required me to crouch in a position that made my back complain. The whole time, my brain was running calculations: twenty minutes late already, another seven to walk to Hut X, Finch would be making notes in that little book of his, the one where he recorded every infraction like a ledger of sins.

I was halfway to the door, jacket in hand, when the absence registered.

The Black Book.

My fingers went to my jacket pocket before the conscious thought had finished forming. Empty. The pocket was empty. I checked the other side, then the cardigan, then patted down my trousers with increasing desperation. Nothing. The notebook wasn't there.

The room contracted around me.

I couldn't breathe properly. The air was there, I could feel it moving in and out of my lungs, but it wasn't working, wasn't doing what air was supposed to do. My hands were shaking as I tore through the bedclothes, throwing the pillow across the room, yanking the thin blanket off the mattress. Not there. Not under the desk. Not on the chair or the windowsill or any of the seventeen places I might have left it.

Where is it where is it where is it.

The words looped in my head, drowning out everything else. That notebook was mine. Bea had made it for me, had stitched my initials inside with crooked letters, had writtenfor your clever thoughts and secret codeson the first page in her messy hand. It was where I kept everything I couldn't say aloud, encrypted in systems only I could read. My fears. My failures. The thoughts about men that could get me imprisoned or worse. Without it, I was exposed. Unarmoured. Anyone could look at me and see the truth of what I was.

I dropped to my knees and shoved my arm under the bed, fingers scraping against dust and the spines of books I'd forgotten I owned. My vision was narrowing at the edges, that particular tunnel focus that meant I was minutes away from something I couldn't control.

Then I saw it. Wedged between the bed frame and the wall, half-hidden in shadow. It must have fallen while I was writing last night, transcribing my thoughts into cipher because that was the only way they made sense anymore.

I grabbed it. Pressed it against my chest. Closed my eyes and counted backwards from twenty in French because English required too little concentration.

Vingt. Dix-neuf. Dix-huit.

By the time I reachedun, my breathing had steadied and the room had stopped trying to crush me. I slipped the notebook into my jacket pocket, felt its weight settle against my ribs like a second heartbeat, and only then could I finish getting ready.

I was going to be catastrophically late.

The walkfrom my billet to Hut X usually took seven minutes. I knew this because I'd timed it, because knowing things like thathelped me feel less like I was constantly losing track of the world. I also knew that there were exactly forty-three paving stones on the main path if you counted the broken one near the manor steps, and that the third lamp post from the canteen made a clicking sound when the wind blew from the east.

These were not useful facts. My brain collected them anyway, filing them alongside German naval call signs and the rhythmic quirks of individual Enigma operators, all the patterns that made up the texture of my days.