The Color of Secrets by Lindsay Ashford Read Free Book Online Page A

heard anything?”
    “Fifteen months since his last letter. Three weeks after that I got the telegram about his ship going down.” Eva raked her fingers through the tendrils of hair that had worked free from her cap. “Sometimes I have this nightmare that I’m with him on the ship and we’re trapped in a locked room with water pouring under the door. And when I wake up, I think for a second that he’s there in the bed beside me.” Her eyes pooled with tears and she swallowed hard. “Then I see David, fast asleep in his cot and it hits me. He’s never even going to remember Eddie. He’s never going to know what it’s like to have a dad.”
    “I know,” Cathy squeezed her arm. “Mikey has no memory of Stuart. It’s hard. It seems so unfair.”
    “But it’s different for you, Cathy.”
    “Why?”
    Eva’s finger stopped its relentless circling and she looked up. “You really loved Stuart, didn’t you?”
    “Didn’t you love Eddie?”
    Eva hesitated. “I don’t know. That’s what makes it so awful. When he left, we . . . we weren’t exactly on good terms.”
    Cathy shook her head. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have asked. Tell me to mind my own business.”
    “No, it’s okay. It’s just that I’ve . . . well, I’ve never come out and said it to anyone before.”
    “How long were you together?”
    She blinked once, twice, before replying. “Two years when he went missing. But we spent a lot of that time apart.” Eva’s eyes darted to a patch of wall above Cathy’s head. “We got married on a special license a week after my old house was bombed. We were both eighteen and we’d only been seeing each other for a few months. Eddie lost his mother and sister in the bombing and I . . . I lost my dad.” She pressed her lips together until they disappeared.
    “I’m sorry,” Cathy whispered. “Listen, you don’t have to . . . ”
    “I do.” Eva nodded slowly and deliberately, still staring at the wall. “I do.” She took a long breath. “We had to move here, to Wolverhampton. Eddie had just joined the navy and expected to be sent abroad straightaway. It was all so . . . ” she paused again, tears prickling the back of her eyes.
    Cathy waited, silent now.
    “My life just changed overnight. Before we were bombed—before the war—I had the job in the library in Coventry. Dad was a signalman on the railway. Mum was at home, and Dilys was at school. We felt lucky because Dad was in a reserved occupation.” She took another breath. “When we lost him, I was suddenly the one in charge. Mum wasn’t in a fit state to do anything. For the first time in my life I had to behave like a grown-up. And getting married seemed a grown-up thing to do. Eddie and I just clung to each other. We were both in shock about the bombing, and Eddie was terrified of going to war.”
    “How long did you have together before he left?”
    “He was posted to the south coast two days after the wedding.” A fleeting, wistful look that was not quite a smile crossed her face. “I used to live for the times he came home on leave. Mum bought us a double bed as a wedding present. I remember going to sleep that first night thinking that if I had a baby, it would be lovely for Mum; that it was the only thing in the world that might help her get over Dad.” She gave a slight shake of her head. “It didn’t happen that quickly for us, though. I got pregnant on our first anniversary, when Eddie came home on leave.”
    “Didn’t he want a baby?”
    “No, it wasn’t that: he was thrilled about it, actually.” Eva paused, looking directly at Cathy now. “But David didn’t look like other babies: he was born with a big strawberry birthmark on his cheek. The doctor said it would disappear—which it nearly has—but Eddie hated it.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when he saw David that first time. He tried to hide what he felt, of course, but he didn’t fool