Kissed a Sad Goodbye

didn’t envy them.
    The days dragged by. He thought several times of William, just across the river, but Greenwich seemed a world away and William had not invited him to visit. On Boxing Day, with guilty relief, he kissed his parents goodbye and caught the train back to Surrey, but his pleasure at returning there had been short-lived.
    As he watched Mr. Haliburton at the chalkboard, he thought of the first time he had seen him in Edwina’s drawing room, on New Year’s Day. William and Irene had returned and they’d all gathered in the kitchen, poking spoons and fingers into Cook’s pots while she scolded and flapped at them with her apron. After a few weeks of subsisting mostly on turnips and potatoes, Lewis’s stomach was growling at the thought of the ham Cook had promised for their New Year’s feast, and there was to be a tart as well, made from the preserved gooseberries they’d picked in the autumn. He’d been inching towards the larder with the idea of just having a peek at the sweet when Edwina had come into the kitchen and asked them to join her.
    “Maybe we’ll get a glass of sherry for a New Year’s toast,” William whispered, elbowing him as they followed Edwina down the corridor, but Lewis had been more interested in watching Irene. She wore a wool skirt and jumper rather than trousers, her glossy copper hair bounced on her shoulders, and it seemed to him that there was something different about the way she walked. Irene had looked back then and smiled at him, and it had made him feel quite odd.
    As they entered the drawing room, Lewis first saw through the window the strange car in the drive, its bonnet glistening with rain. Then he noticed the tall, thin man standing before the fire, smoking, his back to them. He didn’t turn round to greet them and Lewis noticed that the hand holding the cigarette shook.
    Edwina glanced at the man and lit a cigarette of her own before she spoke. “This is my cousin, Freddie Haliburton. He’s been invalided out of the RAF and will be staying with us for a while.” She paused, sipping at a glass of the sherry she hadn’t offered them. Lewis had been smirking at William’s disappointment and not paying much attention when she’d continued, “Freddie is going to be your new tutor, so I wanted you to get acquainted right away.”
    This brought Lewis up with a snap, and as the stranger turned round slowly, he heard Irene give a small gasp beside him.
    It took all of Lewis’s effort not to react, though a sidelong glance told him that Irene had raised a hand to her mouth and William bad lost his color. The left side of Freddie Haliburton’s face was a shining mass of red scar tissue, closing his eye, dragging the corner of his brow down and the corner of his mouth up in a way that might have looked comical, but did not.
    “It’s Group Captain Haliburton,” the man said, and Lewis knew he’d seen the horror in their eyes. “But since we’re going to be such good friends, you may call me Mister Haliburton.” His light, mocking drawl had a slight rasp to it, as if he had difficulty breathing. Then he smiled. Or at least the right side of his mouth rose in a grotesque parody of a smile that was even more unpleasant than his face in repose, and Lewis had suddenly had a very bad feeling about it all.
    Now, Freddie Haliburton turned from the chalkboard to face them, and while the shock of seeing his face had lessened, Lewis’s dislike of him had not.
    “Mr. Finch,” said Freddie, with the smile Lewis had come to loathe, “shall we see if your ability to think logically about the House of Commons has improved since yesterday? Or could it be that common is as common does?”
     
    KINCAID SLEPT FITFULLY ON THE NARROW bed, waking with the duvet kicked onto the floor, a dull headache, and an image of Annabelle Hammond that had somehow become entwined with a vivid dream of Vic.
    But the day that greeted him when he stepped from his room in the farmhouse’s converted stable block was fresh and clear enough to revive his spirits. When he’d breakfasted and thanked his hosts, he set out in the Rover with Madeleine’s directions on the seat beside him.
    His route wound up into the hills, and the occasional gap in the thick woodlands gave a superb view of the Surrey Weald. He thought of walking in these woods with Gemma the previous autumn, when they’d climbed Leith Hill together, and the moment’s reminiscing caused him to bypass the turning for the