Read Online The Edge of the Fall by Kate Williams - Free Book Online Page A

how she hadn’t realised she was driving the ambulance in front of her and so when the bombs rained down, she’d thought it was someone else. It was only when she got out to help that she’d seen Shep’s poor face. ‘Then I heard the news that Michael had died and I didn’t go back,’ she said. ‘The others wrote to me, but I didn’t go back. I was too much of a coward. I just stayed in London.’
    By the end, she’d been looking at her hands, staring at them as she talked. She knew her cousin was listening hard, that she’d clasp her hands, tell her how she could never imagine such horrors. They’d have a sympathy, so close you didn’t need words. Louisa would understand. Celia looked up. But Louisa was staring out of the window. Her cousin wasn’t looking at her at all. Celia watched her raise her hand, pick at her fingernail.
    â€˜Cousin?’ she said softly.
    Louisa dropped her hand, looked at her, gave a smile. ‘It must have been very awful, Celia,’ she said, quietly. She stared at the door. Celia knew: she was waiting for Arthur to come. They sat insilence until he did, striding through the door, demanding Louisa, sweeping her off to look at something or other. After that, Celia stopped trying.
    The year slipped by, into September. The leaves turned the colour of burnt honey on the trees. Emmeline wrote to the family that Albert was trying to sit up, Lily was still quiet. She didn’t invite them to stay. There were demonstrations about work on the streets of London, near Parliament and the palace, but if Mr Janus was involved, Emmeline didn’t tell them.
    Celia wandered around the house, sat on her mossy stone under the tree. Rudolf had begun to tell her she needed a purpose. He talked about how, when he was her age, he was already setting up the business – and that Verena was married and learning to run the home. ‘You must do something, Celia,’ he said. ‘Those school reports of yours from Winterbourne always said you had excellent potential. Now look!’
    On the day Rudolf told her she needed an occupation, Celia threw herself on to her bed and wept. Then there had been a knock at the door.
    â€˜Come in,’ said Celia. She was hoping it was her father, meaning to apologise. ‘Oh, it’s you,’
    Louisa stood there, holding a flower. ‘I’m sorry you’re sad, cousin. I came to see if I could help.’
    Celia shook her head. ‘I don’t think anyone can help. I just have to get out of here.’
    Louisa stood, uncertain at the door. ‘I can try. Why don’t you talk to me?’
    Celia sat up. And then, to her shame and horror, all the anger came flooding out. ‘How can you help me? You’re only a child. There’s nothing you can do! Why do you think you can?’
    She was shouting at all of them, the whole world, everyone and everything that had been taken from her. But her anger was directed at Louisa. Her cousin stood there, and her lip wobbled. She put the flower on the table by the door, backed out and closedit behind her. Celia turned to cry, thinking, she saw now, about herself and not Louisa.
    Celia meant to apologise to her cousin. Really she did. But instead, that night she told them she had a headache and would eat her meal in her room – and so she wrote a letter to Tom. Even though she knew that she shouldn’t. It was all over now. She said to herself sometimes that she hadn’t really been in love with him while he was away fighting. She had just told herself that she was in love with him. It was just her old life she missed.
    Then she listened to the words inside her head and they said, You love him! She was in love with him. She’d thought once the war was over they could be together, but then he’d told her that Rudolf was his father – that his mother and Rudolf had had an affair when she’d worked at Stoneythorpe –