The Legacy

started to rearrange the objects on it. For a few minutes everyone sat in silence. Then slowly, gradually, conversation started again and the salon resumed its low hum of activity.
    ‘Well!’ Jim said, turning Julia round on her swivel chair, asking her to face up towards him so that he could do her hairline. ‘That was a bit out of the ordinary, wasn’t it!’
    Julia nodded. Her hands were shaking and she quickly moved them under her gown. There was another policeman in the doorway; she could see him out of the corner of her eye. Jim saw him too.
    ‘You just missed the nutter,’ he called out. ‘She’s been taken away.’
    The policeman looked at him for a moment, then entered the salon. He headed straight for Julia. She started to sweat. They were coming for her. She’d known they would. She’d known it. She was shaking; she was terrified.
    ‘Jim Harrison?’
    Jim turned and smiled. ‘That’s right. What can I do for you?’
    The policeman didn’t return the smile. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,’ he said.
    ‘Come with you?’ Julia nodded and started to stand up.
    ‘If you don’t mind.’ The policeman took Jim by the arm and frogmarched him outside. Julia stared after them uncertainly. Jim? They’d come for Jim? He was an Underground agent? It was impossible. No, not impossible, but unlikely. So unlikely.
    ‘My foils!’ she called after them foolishly. She ran to the door, out on to the pavement. There was a van right outside and the policeman opened the back. The road was empty; checkpoints and blockades had been set up around the salon. She followed the policeman and Jim. ‘Can’t he finish my foils first? I’m sure there’s been a mistake. My husband works for the Authorities. I can call –’
    ‘Back inside, please,’ the policeman said to her curtly, but it was too late – she’d already run a few metres down the road, had seen inside the van. The bodies, some alive, some dead, were piled on top of each other like animal carcasses, the stench overwhelming. Not Underground supporters. Not terrorists. They were ill. Like the woman who’d wanted water. They were all ill, Julia realised with a thud.
    Jim had seen too. His face was white. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’ he shouted desperately as the policeman threw him inside with the rotting bodies. ‘There’s been a mistake. I’m not –’ But his words were lost as he was thrown in the back, the door closed behind him.
    The policeman got into the van and stared at Julia who was rooted to the spot, unable to move. ‘You get back inside,’ he said. ‘Else you’re going in the van too, understand?’
    Julia nodded. She edged back towards the salon, walked in and closed the door. Then she stood there, stock still, unable to move for several minutes. Because she did understand. Finally, she understood completely.

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    Chapter Sixteen
     
    The rain was lashing down and Molly’s battered pram kept getting stuck in the mud as Anna attempted to push it with one hand and pull Ben along with the other down the winding lane that led to her house. Their house. Peter was only gone for a week, she knew that, but she also knew that it was empty without him.
    She tried not to think about it, tried to remember the steel wall that she’d built up at Grange Hall – a wall that protected her from disappointment, that kept everyone out. But the wall was no use now, she knew that.
    Anna hadn’t needed anybody back then, had seen it as a matter of pride that no one could ever disappoint her because she didn’t hope for anything. She’d thought she was strong, but now . . . now she could see that she’d been weak, fragile, so easy to break. These days she allowed herself to feel – allowed anger to flood her veins, joy to fill her heart and pain to fill her eyes with tears. She knew that each emotion came and went, knew that she could cope with whatever life threw at her. Even Peter going to London.
    She reached for her keys; her hands were soaking wet and it took an age to work one into her pocket. Eventually, though, the door swung open and she pulled the pram in. She’d turned the heating off the day before when the icy weather broke and clouds appeared, offering some natural protection from the cold, but still the house felt warm. Warm and safe. Anna couldn’t understand desires that stretched outside of those two words. Or three, perhaps. Warm and safe and free. Warm and safe and free and loved . . . She shook