Chapter 18 Christmas #2
“Christmas greetings to you all,” he said, tone suggesting he'd rather be anywhere else.
“I won't keep you from your breakfast with a long speech. Just wanted to inform you that today and tomorrow, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, are designated leave days. Those of you who wish to visit London or the nearby town are authorized to do so. Passes will be available at the gate.”
Murmurs of surprise and pleasure rippled through the room. Actual leave. Proper leave. The chance to escape the estate, even briefly.
“However,” Finch continued, voice sharpening, “you are reminded that all security protocols remain in effect. You will not discuss your work. You will not bring unauthorized persons back to the estate. You will conduct yourselves appropriately and remember that you represent this institution wherever you go.”
His gaze swept the room, lingering briefly on me, then on Tom. “Dismissed. Enjoy your holiday.”
He left, and the room erupted into planning. Who was going where, what they'd do, the overwhelming relief of forty-eight hours away from codes and intercepts and the weight of the war.
Noor appeared at my elbow. “You should go to London. See your family. When's the last time you saw them?”
“Months. But I don't know if—”
“You're going. I'm not arguing. You look like a strong wind could knock you over, and seeing your sister will help.” She paused. “Or you could go with someone else. Someone tall. Someone who watches you like you're the only person in the room.”
Heat flooded my face. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Sure you don't.” She grinned. “Just. Be careful. And be happy. Those aren't mutually exclusive.”
She left before I could respond, and I sat there processing.
London. With Tom. Two days away from this place, from Finch's watchful eyes, from the constant pressure of maintaining distance.
Two days to just be.
If he wanted to. If he'd come.
Looked across the room again. Found Tom already looking back. Raised an eyebrow in question.
He nodded. Small. Certain.
My heart did something complicated in my chest.
This was happening. We were doing this.
Perfect.
London swallowed us whole the moment we stepped off the train at King's Cross.
Noise crashed over me like a wave. Vendors shouting, steam hissing from engines, the clatter of a hundred footsteps on platform stones, children crying, soldiers laughing, someone playing an accordion badly in the corner.
My brain tried to process it all at once, cataloguing every input, and I felt my shoulders creep up towards my ears, tension coiling tight in my spine.
Tom's hand touched my elbow, just briefly. “Alright?”
“Give me a moment.” I closed my eyes, counted to ten, let my fingers find the edge of my scarf. The wool was familiar, comforting. Mum's knitting. I rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, the repetitive motion grounding me, pulling me back from the edge of sensory overload.
When I opened my eyes, Tom was watching me with that careful attention he'd developed. The kind that didn't feel like pity or impatience. Just understanding.
“Better?” he asked.
“Better. Let's go before I change my mind about this whole expedition.”
His mouth twitched. “Can't have that. I've been promised a proper introduction to the Pembroke family.”
I smiled at him sweetly.
We pushed through the crowds, Tom moving slightly ahead to clear a path, his broad shoulders parting the sea of people. I followed in his wake, grateful for the buffer, trying not to think about what I was about to do. What I was about to risk.
Outside, the city hit me all over again. But it wasn't just the noise and movement. It was London itself. Changed. Wounded.
I stopped walking, and Tom nearly collided with me.
“Art? What's—” He followed my gaze, and his voice died.
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 moved to 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.
She looked tired. That was my first thought.
Tired in a way that went deeper than sleepless nights, that spoke of years of worry and rationing and wondering if the people she loved would survive to see tomorrow.
Her hair had gone fully grey since I'd last seen her, swept back in its usual neat style but thinner somehow. Smaller.
But her eyes, when they found mine, were exactly as I remembered. Soft and searching and full of a love that had never wavered, even when I'd been at my most difficult.
“Arthur.” She crossed the hall in three quick steps and pulled me into her arms. She smelled of lavender and flour and home, and I had to close my eyes against the sudden sting of tears. “My boy. Let me look at you.”
She pulled back, hands on my face, studying me the way she always did. Checking for damage. Looking for signs of the son she'd raised beneath whatever the war had made of him.
“You're too thin,” she pronounced. “Are they feeding you properly at that place?”
“They're feeding me fine, Mum.”
“Hmm.” She didn't sound convinced. Then her gaze slid past me to Tom, and something shifted in her expression. Curiosity. Assessment. A mother's protective instinct engaging.
“And this must be your friend.”
Friend. The word sat between us, heavy with everything it wasn't saying.
“Mum.” I took a breath. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “This is Tom. Thomas Hale. He's not my friend.”
The hallway went very quiet.