Dominion by C. J. Sansom Read Free Book Online

ticket, for one of those lunchtime concerts they give in churches round Whitehall. There was a name on the back – her name, Carol Bennett. She must have
reserved them.’
    ‘Maybe a whole group of them went. Did you ask him about it?’
    ‘No.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m a coward,’ she added quietly.
    ‘You’ve never been a coward,’ Irene answered emphatically. ‘Was it a Saturday concert?’
    ‘No. It was during the week.’ Sarah took a deep breath. ‘Then last Thursday evening, when David was supposed to be playing tennis, I rang the club to speak to him, just to
check if he was there. Spying on him, I suppose. Well, he wasn’t.’
    ‘Oh, darling,’ Irene said. ‘What are you going to do? Confront him?’
    ‘Perhaps I should, but you see . . .’ Sarah picked at the uneaten biscuit on her plate. ‘I’m frightened that if I’m right it could be the end of us. And if
I’m wrong, confronting him could drive us further apart than ever. So you see, I
am
a coward.’ She frowned. ‘But there’s only so much I’ll take. It goes round
and round in my head, being stuck alone in that bloody house all day.’
    ‘Have you thought any more about going back to teaching?’
    ‘They won’t take married women.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Well, at least I’ve got my charity work. The Christmas toys for children of the unemployed committee starts meeting
next week. That’ll get me out of the house. But it won’t stop me worrying.’
    ‘Darling, you can’t just let suspicion eat away at you. Believe me, that’s what it does.’
    ‘I’m keeping track of him. I will say something, but I have to be sure.’ She looked at her sister in appeal. ‘I could be risking everything.’
    It was dark when they left the Corner House, a slight fog in the air. Wet tram rails glittered in the streetlights. They embraced and parted. Sarah walked to the tube station;
if the trains were running normally she should have dinner cooked by the time David came home at seven thirty. The streets were getting crowded, everyone wrapped up in coats, men in bowlers and
caps and Homburgs, women in headscarves or the large saucer-shaped hats with feathers that were fashionable this year. Outside the entrance to Leicester Square tube station some workmen were
scrubbing at a whitewashed letter ‘V’, one of the Resistance symbols. V for victory. Someone must have painted it there secretly during the night.
    When Sarah arrived home the house was cold. She stood in the little hall, with its coat stand and the big table where the telephone sat, next to a large, colourful Regency vase
that had belonged to David’s mother. They had had to lock it away for safety when Charlie started toddling.
    When she was growing up between the wars Sarah had thought of herself as an independent woman, a teacher. Before she met David she had begun to worry, at twenty-three, whether
she might turn into a spinster, not because men didn’t find her attractive, but because she found so many of them dull. She had wondered, during the 1939–40 war, whether women would
become more independent, with their husbands away, but everything had gone back to normal afterwards, and government policy now was for wives to stay at home, keep what jobs there were for the
men.
    Irene was the beauty in the family but Sarah was pretty too, with blue eyes and a straight little nose, and her square chin gave her face a strong look. She had never been in love before she met
David at the tennis-club dance in 1942. He had swept her off her feet, as they said in the romantic novels. A year later she was married and then she had gone with him on his two-year posting to
New Zealand. When she returned she found she was pregnant with Charlie. She missed her work sometimes but she loved their baby, already looked forward to others following on.
    Charlie was a bright, excitable, cheerful boy, quick to walk and learn. He had Sarah’s blonde hair and her features, but occasionally