Read Chapter 7: The Small Lie

The knock came at half past seven, sharp and insistent, the way her mother knocked when she meant business. Maggie had been drying her hair by the kitchen stove, the blueprint page folded small in her coat pocket where it had lived for three days now, a secret she pressed her fingers against like a talisman.

"Margaret. Come into the sitting room. Your father has news."

The words carried through the thin walls with the weight of something already decided. Maggie hung the towel on its hook and smoothed her skirt. In the sitting room, her father stood by the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back—his announcement posture. Her mother sat in the armchair, knitting needles resting in her lap, a smile on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Close the door, Margaret."

She did.

"We've received word from your uncle in Toronto." Her father's voice had a formality to it, as though he were reading from a government document. "The paperwork is moving faster than we expected. We sail on the sixteenth of next month."

Sixteenth of next month. Maggie counted the days backwards—a month, give or take. Four weeks of London autumn, and then the Atlantic.

"That's wonderful, isn't it, Margaret?" Her mother's needles clicked once as if to punctuate the sentence. "A new beginning. No more sirens, no more shelters. Real beds and open skies."

Maggie looked at the window. The blackout curtains were drawn, but she could picture the street beyond—the sandbags piled at the corners, the shattered glass of the tobacconist's swept into tidy piles, the marks on the pavement where the incendiaries had fallen last week. Her London. Her city of rubble and stubbornness.

"I'm not going."

The words came out before she had weighed them, and she heard how they landed. Her father's hands unclasped. Her mother's needles went still.

"Margaret," her father said slowly, "this isn't a discussion about preferences. This is a decision about safety. About family."

"I'm twenty-four years old." Maggie heard her own voice steady, surprising herself. "I'm not a child to be packed up and shipped across an ocean. My work is here. My life is here."

Her mother set the knitting aside and stood, smoothing her dress. She moved close enough that Maggie could smell the lavender water she used when she could get it. "Your life is with us, Margaret. We are your family. When your brother—" Her voice caught. When her brother had died at Dunkirk, the sentence went unsaid, but it hung in the air between them, a ghost at every table. "We cannot lose you too."

Maggie felt the familiar pressure behind her ribs—the guilt, the duty, the love that pulled like a tide. But there was another pull now. Stronger. A man who defused bombs with steady hands. A torn page of house blueprints in her pocket. A promise she had made to find a girl named Sylvia.

"You won't lose me," she said, softer now. "You'll write. I'll write. When the war is over—"

"When the war is over," her father said heavily, "London may not be standing. And neither may we."

"Then let me choose to stay for whatever time remains." Maggie's voice cracked, and she hated it. "Please. I'm asking you to let me choose."

Her father looked at her for a long moment, the lines around his eyes deepening. He had aged in the last year, she realized—her strong, reliable father, thinning at the temples, his hands beginning to shake when he thought no one was watching. The war had taken pieces of all of them.

"Your mother and I will discuss this further," he said finally. "You may be excused."

It was not a victory. It was barely a stay of execution. But Maggie took it, dropping her chin in a nod and turning toward the door. Her mother's voice stopped her.

"One thing, Margaret."

She turned back.

"When you were born, we registered your birth at St. Thomas's. Do you remember? Your father had to queue for three hours." Her mother's voice was light, conversational, almost casual. "Birth certificates are funny things. They don't lie about dates. Not even about daughters who think they're too old to be told what to do."

Maggie's stomach dropped.

"What I'm saying," her mother continued, folding her hands, "is that the paperwork may say you're twenty-four. But it also says you were born on the seventh of March in 1917, which means you are exactly the age I say you are, and you will always be young enough to be protected."

It was a warning dressed as a memory. Maggie understood: her own birth would be used as a weapon against her. She had no money of her own beyond her warden's stipend. She had no legal claim to the flat. If her parents chose to drag her onto that ship, there was little she could do to stop them.

She smiled anyway—the polite, hollow smile she had perfected for wardens' meetings and church socials. "Goodnight, Mother. Father."

In her room, she closed the door and sank onto the edge of her bed, pressing both hands over her mouth until the shaking passed. Then she reached into her coat pocket and unfolded the blueprint page. Square rooms. A narrow hallway. A window where the morning light would fall across a kitchen table. She traced the pencil lines with her finger, committing them to memory.

The phone box was three streets away, and she was out of ration coupons for the week, but she went anyway, slipping past her parents' room with her shoes in her hands. It was dark by the time she reached the red box on the corner, the receiver smelling of stale tobacco and damp wool. She dialed the number Pemberton had given her and waited through nine rings before a gruff voice answered.

"Hollis? It's Maggie Hollis. I—is Mr. Reid there?" She pressed the earpiece closer, as if that would help. "I know it's late. I just—"

"One moment."

Shuffling. A muffled exchange. Then Thomas's voice, low and warm even through the crackle of the line. "Maggie? Is everything all right?"

She hadn't thought about what she would say. She had only known she needed to hear him. "I wanted to hear your voice," she admitted. "Is that terribly forward?"

A pause. She could picture him smiling—the slight crinkle at the corner of his eye, the way he looked down when he was pleased, as if happiness were something to be handled carefully. "Not forward at all," he said. "I was just thinking of you. There's a house on my page—I'm working on a new one. Bigger kitchen. I think you'd like it."

Maggie laughed, surprised by the tears pricking at her eyes. "Only a kitchen? I have standards, Mr. Reid. I'll need to see this blueprint myself before I commit."

"Saturday, then. The demonstration's at nine. I'll save you a seat in the front row." His voice gentled. "Maggie. Is everything truly all right?"

She could lie. She had been lying all evening. But his question seemed to reach through the telephone line and find the place where she kept her fears folded like pressed flowers.

"My parents want to leave for Canada," she said. "In a month. They want me to go with them."

Silence. She could hear him breathing.

"Will you go?" His voice was even. Measured. The voice of a man who worked with wires and fuses, who could not afford sudden movements.

"No." She said it firmly, the word settling into certainty as it left her mouth. "I'm going to find a way to stay."

"Then we'll find a way together." He said it simply, as if it were no more complicated than defusing a bomb or drawing a window on a blueprint. "Saturday. We'll talk properly."

"Saturday," she echoed.

She hung up and stood in the phone box for a long moment, the dial tone buzzing in her ear. The lie she had told—that she was too old to be forced anywhere—was flimsy, built on hope rather than fact. And her mother, with her careful memory and her knowledge of birth certificates, held the match to burn it down. But Maggie also knew something her mother did not. She had a number to call. A man who was thinking of her even now. A page of blueprints that promised a future built from nothing but will and want.

When she stepped out of the phone box, the sirens began to wail.