The Silent Tide Read Free Page A

glancing at the address – Stone House, Salmarsh, in Suffolk – not sure whether the job was prestigious or a nuisance, and wondering if George was jealous that she’d been given it. Since he always spoke as though he knew best, it was difficult to tell.
    ‘Biography of Hugh Morton, Becky,’ Gillian told her assistant, who was taking notes. ‘Put Emily’s initials on the minutes.’ She shuffled her papers and sighed. ‘I’m sorry to be shifting so much of my work on you all at the moment, but with my Australian trip brought forward I’ve no alternative.’
    Now Emily stood in the gloomy lobby examining the book, wondering if Gillian had left it for her. She hadn’t managed to get through to Jacqueline Morton yet. She was just thinking that she must try again on Monday when her phone vibrated with a message: Here now, Em. Where you? xx She smiled and wrote back, Coming. Her mind now full of Matthew, she reached to replace the book in the pigeonhole, then hesitated. She ought to look at it properly.
    She pressed the button for the lift and when its doors slid open, recalled the brief sight of the woman with the bags who’d left a few minutes ago. Like Isabel in the little book , her identity was a mystery.
     
     

Chapter 2
     
     
     
    Isabel
     
     
    London, November 1948
    The petite redhead dressed in sherry brown hefted her suitcase off the bus on Earl’s Court Road and shivered as a bitter wind caught her. She stopped to wrap her scarf more tightly round her neck and glanced about, unsure of her way. People flowed round her with eyes cast down, too busy picking their way across fractured pavements to stop for yet another refugee. Above, pewter-coloured clouds hung sullen with rain.
    Nearby, a skinny youth selling newspapers breathed into his cupped hands to warm them.
    ‘Excuse me, do you know Mimosa Road?’ she asked him.
    ‘Nex’ left, Miss, and along a bit,’ came the mumbled reply.
    Thanking him, she picked up the heavy case and set off in the direction he had indicated, but the labyrinth of side streets where she found herself had no signs and she had to ask the way again, this time of a young mother with a toddler straining on its reins. Eventually she found herself on the doorstep of a handsome red-brick Victorian villa, one of the few still whole in a bomb-damaged terrace. It had to be the right house: someone had fastened a strip of card with a hand-scrawled 32 above the door, where a glass fanlight must once have been.
    She hesitated, wondering not for the first time if she’d been rash of the Dome of Discovery. r,’ he said to come. Since the alternative was to return home defeated, she raised the door knocker. It fell with a loud bright sound. While she waited, the worries chased through her mind. Suppose her aunt was away? Or didn’t live here any more? She wished she’d had the sense to telephone ahead.
    The door flew open to reveal not Aunt Penelope, but a wiry, flat-chested woman in a shabby overall, wielding a carpet beater. She had clearly been interrupted in her task for she was breathing hard, and strands of thin, iron-coloured hair escaped an untidy knot at her nape. From the expression on her face, it was plain that finding a strange young woman with a suitcase on the doorstep was an unwelcome interruption.
    ‘Yes?’ the woman snapped.
    ‘I’m looking for Mrs Tyler,’ the girl said, in as firm a voice as she could muster.
    The woman studied her with a suspicious eye. ‘You sellin’ something?’ she asked.
    ‘Certainly not,’ said the girl, drawing herself up to her full five feet two, glad that she’d taken trouble with her appearance before setting out. Not only had she purloined her mother’s best hat, but also the precious remnants of a coral lipstick. This, she had been pleased to see in the mirror of the Ladies at Charing Cross station, suited her creamy skin, auburn hair and brown eyes to perfection.
    The woman’s mouth set in a hard thin line. ‘This is Mrs