Page 28 of The Number of Love
He tried to speak. Only air wheezed out. But it didn’t matter. Thoroton was here. Drake had done his job. Now he could let his eyes slide closed.
9
Margot slid into the chair at her desk, ignoring the stares from the secretaries. From Culbreth and de Grey and Adcock. Ignoring the gaping emptiness of the desk by the door, ignoring the realization that soon it would have to be filled by some other secretary. Ignoring the ache that persisted in her throat and the general discomfort of her stomach.
“Margot. Sweetheart.” Lady Hambro perched on the edge of Margot’s desk and rested a hand on her shoulder.
She almost shrugged her off, but then she heard Maman in her ear.Don’t be rude, Margot. She’s trying to give you comfort. She forced herself to meet the woman’s eyes.
Lady Hambro had been there yesterday at the wake. They all had, every member of Room 40. Paying their respects. Clasping her hand, thumping Lukas on the back. Whispering words that meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The fingers around her shoulder squeezed. “You shouldn’t be here, dear. You’re ill. I know very well DID told you to take a week off.”
Margot blinked and let her gaze drift away from Ebba Hambro’s misty eyes and trembling lips. “I’m on the mend. And I have nowhere else to be, my lady.”
At home in 3E, Lukas was always there, trying to persuade her to come to his house. He said words likejust for tonightanduntilyou are better, but she well knew once he got her there it would bejust for a week,just for a month,and then finallywe might as well let the flat go.
She wouldn’t. Shewouldn’tgive up the flat.
But she couldn’t just stay there all the time either. She couldn’t just let this cold run its course. Dot had insisted on staying with her, leaving only to go to work. She’d been tireless, attentive, a perfect friend. A true sister.
But her hands had been shaking that morning, and Margot had caught her looking up the street toward her own flat. If she didn’t go home soon, she’d ... Well, Margot didn’t know what exactly would happen. But she knew it wouldn’t be good.
So she’d stirred the last of her honey into a cup of tea, told her throat itwouldbe better by midday, and dressed for work. She’d resolutely not looked at that closed door to the little cupboard of a room. She would have to open it eventually. Go through the lifeless possessions trapped inside. Decide what to keep, what to get rid of, what to do with the room.
But not today.
Lady Hambro sighed. “You are not alone, Margot. You have your brother and his family. Why not spend a few days with them? Reminisce together, laugh together, cry together. It would do you good.”
Margot’s answer was to pick up her pencil and a fresh sheet of paper. She had no pneumatically delivered tube of papers before her, but she scratched a few numbers onto the page anyway. Lady Hambro wouldn’t know that they were nonsense—nothing but a theorem that had proven unworkable.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the look Maman would give her for ignoring someone trying to help.
Margot didn’t need help. She didn’t need to reminisce. Or to cry. And the idea of laughing—that didn’t even deserve a mental response, much less a vocal one. She just needed tobe. And she could do that best here.
Lady Hambro sighed again and straightened, removing her hand from Margot’s shoulder after a matronly pat. “All right. If this iswhat you need to do, then so be it. But do look after your health, Margot dear. You’ll do no one any good if you collapse in a fever—and we certainly don’t want the rest of Room 40 coming down with it again.”
“I’m on the mend,” she said again. Even added what she hoped looked like a smile. Faintly. Perhaps. If the lady had a good imagination. “No fever, I promise you.” Not like That Day. The seventh of November.
Eleventh month. Seventh day.
Eighteen.
Margot bit down until her jaw hurt and stared at the useless paper in front of her. No more Eighteen.Do you hear me, God?She didn’t even know who it was, but the very fact that the Lord had wanted her to pray forhiminstead of her own mother ... Why hadn’t He whispered in her ear about Maman? Why hadn’t the numbers insisted she go home earlier? Do something? Help somehow? Why had she come down with that mind-muddling fever on that day of all days?
No.No. NO.
She’d say it over and again until that stupidEighteenjust stopped, once and for all.
Lady Hambro moved away. Margot waited for her to leave the room, go off to oversee the secretaries stationed elsewhere in the hub, no doubt—or else to tattle to the admiral on her—before she got up and went to fetch a tube full of papers to be decoded. While she was up, she grabbed a copy of today’s key as well and then settled at her desk.
Usually her pencil flew. Today it trudged. The numbers that generally pranced and skipped through her mind were playing hide-and-seek. But she didn’t need to be at her best. She just needed to behere. Because it wasn’tthere.
The morning sprawled on, stretching and stretching toward lunchtime. When she’d have to face the fact that Maman wouldn’t appear at her side, prodding her to leave her desk and join the other girls.Come, Margot. It will do you good. When she’d have to watchthe other secretaries giggle their way down the hall. It was fine out today—they’d spill out the doors, or perhaps even climb up to the roof.
“Margot.”
Had it been Lady Hambro’s voice, she would have ignored it. Had it been Dot’s, she would have held up a hand, asking for a moment to finish the sentence she was decoding. But it was the admiral’s.
