The Silk Code, page 1
About the Author
DEBORAH SWIFT is a USA TODAY bestselling author of historical fiction, a genre she loves. As a child she enjoyed reading the Victorian classics such as Jane Eyre, Little Women, Lorna Doone and Wuthering Heights. She has been reading historical novels ever since; though she’s a bookaholic and reads widely – contemporary and classic fiction.
In the past, Deborah used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV, so enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction, something she was familiar with as a scenographer. More details of her research and writing process can be found on her website www.deborahswift.com
Deborah likes to write about extraordinary characters set against the background of real historical events.
The Silk Code
DEBORAH SWIFT
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Dublin 1 D01 C9W8
Ireland
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2023
Copyright © Deborah Swift 2023
Deborah Swift asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © May 2023 ISBN: 9780008584719
Version: 2023-05-11
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Note to Readers
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Three
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
A Letter from Deborah Swift
Historical Notes
Acknowledgements
Dear Reader …
About the Publisher
For John, the eggman
Note to Readers
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PART ONE
Chapter 1
Scotland
February 1943
Nancy blew her nose. Tears would be no use for what lay ahead. They’d no telephone at the manse, and the public one was miles away, so she’d have to walk over to Stranraven House to have it out with Andrew. Now Kitty had told her the truth, she’d have to confront him in person, while she was still angry enough to want to see him squirm. She guessed he’d try to talk her round, and the thought of this unsavoury conversation filled her with dread.
The weather was still foul, so she pulled her knitted beret further down over her wavy hair and buttoned up her mackintosh as she trudged across the fields. Stranraven House was a large granite building sunk in the valley, beneath the scree and the pines. Before today, its stark turreted outline had always given her a kind of romantic pleasure, but now she was furious that she would never dance a ceilidh in its great hall, or dine in its wood-panelled dining-room. And Andrew’s parents would be so hurt. She’d come to think of them as relations, and she liked them both, his slightly scatty mother and his old-school father.
Andrew’s new motorcar, a Humber – his pride and joy – was parked outside on the drive. He was definitely in. She wondered bitterly if Audrey had been treated to his little tour of the nearby lochs and glens in his new toy, just as she had. Whether they had kissed in ‘their’ favourite picnic spot next to Loch Earn. The thought re-fuelled her anger, as she marched across the field in her wellington boots, not caring as she squelched through the mud, her hair whipping across her face as it escaped her hat. Up past the staring herd of Highland cows, feet scrunching up the gravel to the front door. She tugged hard on the bell pull, hearing it clang inside the door.
Mrs Havers, the housekeeper, opened it. The familiarity of the hall, with its ticking grandfather clock, almost derailed her resolve.
‘Ah, Nancy, how are you, my dear?’ Mrs Havers smiled benignly at her as if she were still five years old. She’d have no idea why she was there. Nor, for that matter, would Andrew.
Nancy steeled herself. ‘Is Andrew in?’
‘Down in the drawing room, dear, with the paper. He’s finished his rounds with Dr Barker now.’ Andrew was a junior doctor, and exempt from army service.
Nancy headed down the corridor, her cheeks hot and heart thumping. Of course, Hamish and Hector, the two gundogs, leapt up to greet her exactly as usual and she had to fuss them. After all, none of this was their fault.
‘Hello, Nance,’ Andrew said, standing up with a smile and approaching her with arms out for his usual kiss.
She backed away. ‘Keep your hands off me.’ Her voice was tight and small.
He frowned. He was wearing that brown cardigan she hated too. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. Audrey Hamilton is what’s the matter.’
His face took on a stiff expression. ‘What’s she got to do with anything?’
‘Kitty McIntyre told me you’ve been seeing her.’
‘No, that’s rubbish. We chat sometimes, like friends do.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Andrew. I’ve just been with Kitty on the bus, and I know she’s right. She saw you and Audrey kissing on Stirling high street. And besides, I’ve been friends with Audrey since school and the last few weeks she’s been distinctly “off” with me. How could you?’
‘I haven’t done anything,’ he said bullishly. ‘You’d believe Kitty over me?’
‘Audrey’s my best friend. Or was.’ Nancy found that her throat seemed to have closed so it was hard to speak. She took a deep gulp of air. ‘You’ve not only spoiled things between us, but also between me and Audrey. I wondered what on earth was the matter with her last week at the WRVS; when I started going on about her being a bridesmaid at our wedding and she just looked so miserable, and I couldn’t work out why and—’
‘Audrey and Kitty are just jealous,’ Andrew said, as if he was diagnosing an awkward patient and had just solved the problem. ‘That’s what all this is about.’
‘So now it’s their fault? Nothing to do with you, I suppose. Kitty saw you. You were right under her nose.’
‘That was ages ago. I might have had the odd dalliance with Audrey once, but it’s over, been over for ages—’
Nancy stared. So now he was trying to make out it was something old. ‘I’ll tell you what’s over, Andrew. We are over.’ She pulled off her engagement ring and placed it on the sideboard. ‘I wouldn’t marry you now if you were the last man on earth. You and Audrey are welcome to each other.’
She turned and headed for the door.
‘Wait, Nancy! Don’t go—’ He grabbed her by the shoulder but she twisted away.
She looked up into his face. A face that made her mind swim with a hundred memories that would never happen again. ‘No, Andrew. I trusted you and you broke my trust.’ She swallowed back the lump in her throat. ‘What kind of man betrays his fiancée with her best friend? And then, worse, tells a pack of lies about it?’ The humiliation of it burned deep. ‘I will never trust you again. It’s over.’
‘Aw, Nance. I never meant it to go this far. It was just a little dalliance, that’s all.’
‘And how far is “this far”, Andrew?’
He shrugged. ‘I like Audrey. She’s a live spark, she’s a wee bit outspoken but she’s got “get-up-and-go”. She doesn’t spend all day mooning over furniture catalogues.’
‘What? Is that what you think I do?’
‘Audrey’s ambitious, she’s applied for the WAAF. She’s actually going to do something, not sit around here like you do, winding up bandages and gossiping like an old woman.’
‘I don’t!’ she said. ‘That’s unfair. It was you who persuaded me to do it! When I told you they needed girls at the munitions factory at Bandeath and I wanted to go, you told me you didn’t want a wife of yours working. You said it wouldn’t look good, that it would look like you couldn’t support me. You said I’d be better off volunteering. You know you did! You said I’d meet a better class of person.’
He let out a sigh. ‘You should’ve fought for it. Audrey would have.’
‘Oh, the saintly Audrey, who can do no wrong. Well, you’re welcome to each other. At least now I know you’re nothing but a two-timing swine.’ She blundered from the hall, with the dogs following, tails wagging, at her heels.
Andrew’s mother must have heard the raised voices and she came to see what was going on. ‘Nancy, what’s …?’
‘Ask Andrew,’ she said with venom. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Fraser.’ She barged past as fast as she could and out of sight into the scrubby woodland and the path by the loch. She was aware with a hollow sinking sensation that Andrew hadn’t tried to follow her.
She sat on a rock on the rough pebble shoreline and stared at the dark water. The rain was still pelting down and made concentric ripples eddying towards the shore. As she watched, pulling her mackintosh closer over her chest, a salmon leapt from the water, a sudden flash of silver, it landed with barely a splash.
There are plenty more fish in the sea, people always said.
Except in Glenkyle, where everyone knew everyone else.
She couldn’t stay here. Not with the date of the wedding coming in only a few months – the wedding that was no longer going to happen. How could she bear it? The pitying looks of the neighbours and friends, who all knew she’d been taken for a fool. The feeling of everyone staring. Worst of all she wouldn’t be able to swallow her mother’s sympathy or her father’s ‘let it blow over, boys will be boys’ attitude.
No. She needed to get right away. But where?
She thrust away the thoughts of the comfortable, spacious Stranraven House, and all the plans she’d had for redecorating the lodge, the visions of paddocks for ponies for the children she would never have. The loss of it all caught in her throat like a wire.
She choked back the tears and instead looked hard at her life. There was a grain of truth in what Andrew had said, and that’s what hurt. Though, of course, he’d twisted it, to make excuses for his affair with Audrey.
There was a war on. Here in Scotland, they hadn’t seen much of it though, and she winced at the thought that all she’d done was knit and fold bandages for the WRVS. It seemed paltry when people all over Europe were struggling, persecuted by the Nazi regime, and her problems seemed petty in comparison to the people in France or Poland. With guilt she remembered her mother’s white face on hearing of the devastating blitz on her home town of Rotterdam, and how it had left a lasting scar.
She’d show Andrew Fraser who had ‘get-up-and-go’. She’d contact her brother, Neil. He worked in London for something called the Inter-Services Research Bureau. Maybe he’d have some work she could do. She could type, after all. Anything, anything at all, to get away from here.
Chapter 2
The train was draughty and full of rowdy troops, but Nancy managed to squeeze herself into a compartment with only two WAAFs. The train limped and clanked along with much hissing of steam, signal failures, and extra stops for loading and unloading harassed-looking men from airfields and army bases. A weary conductor stamped her travel permit several times on her long journey from Scotland to London, and at one point the train stopped at a small station and one of the desperate WAAFs risked missing the train to run and fetch them all mugs of tea. They had to drink them scalding hot and return the mugs before the train departed again.
Nancy relished the bustle and activity, despite the stops and starts. It took her mind off Andrew. She was still bitter. Fancy him blaming her for his own insistence that she shouldn’t work. No doubt he’d imagined her in the manor house, standing beside him flanked by his two dogs, with her like the extra dog, quiet and obedient. Now, suddenly, he wanted her to be different. Well, she’d show him.
It was evening by the time the train creaked into King’s Cross, and a cold March fog had set in. Nancy scanned the people on the platform for Neil, her eyes trawling over the damp sea of trilby hats, mackintoshes and umbrellas. He hadn’t wanted to put her up – it had taken a stiff letter from Father to persuade him. When Father gave orders, everyone had to jump to them.
All at once she spotted Neil, his fair hair hidden under the obligatory hat, but she’d know him anywhere by his slightly worried, buttoned-up expression, and his limp as he hurried towards her. He was anxiously beckoning a porter to follow.
To her relief, his face split into a smile. ‘Sis!’ He embraced her with a perfunctory hug.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I don’t need a porter. I’ve only one case and this bag.’ She indicated the cloth bag slung over one arm.
Neil dragged the case from the luggage van and heaved it down. ‘Good Lord!’ he said. ‘What have you got in here, bricks?’
‘Books. And Mother insisted on woollen vests. I’ll throw them away once we get to your flat. The vests, not the books.’
She hurried after him as he wove through the crowded concourse, past the news stall with the headlines chalked above it: ‘French revenge after British destroyer HMS Harvester sunk!’ Neil didn’t even glance at it as they passed out of the dimly lit station and into the dark. She hadn’t realised what it would be like in a blacked-out city. Every window was taped with a cross against bomb damage. No lights shone anywhere. In the distance, stripes of searchlights swept the sky, presumably looking for enemy aircraft.
They huddled at a dingy brick bus shelter with a long queue of people, mostly factory workers by the look of their cloth caps, and when the bus arrived, they crowded on board. Neil bought both tickets, put the case on the luggage rack and ushered Nancy to the back of the bus. A strong smell of damp wool and tobacco pervaded the air, and Nancy rubbed the steamed-up window as they moved off.
‘This area was hit pretty badly,’ Neil said as the bus slowed. ‘For a few days last week nothing could get through. They’ve cleared it quickly though.’
She peered out. Whole facades of buildings were missing; sudden spaces hacked into the cityscape. More heaps of rubble as the bus veered, bumping over potholes.
The bus conductress clipped their tickets and said, ‘If you’re going to Kilburn, you’ll need to get off the stop before and walk. Yesterday’s raid means we can’t go via Elgin Avenue because of an unexploded bomb.’
‘I read it in the paper this morning,’ Neil said. ‘More than thirty dead across London. Women, children, just eating dinner when the bombers struck.’
‘Awful,’ Nancy said. The reality of life in wartime London was beginning to bite.
Sombre now, they disembarked early and Neil insisted on lugging her suitcase the extra half-mile to his flat in Princess Road, Kilburn. Despite his limp, he could get along at quite a pace. Neil lived on the first floor of an old Victorian terrace that had been divided up. His set of stairs were dank and lightless, and after he’d unlocked the door he closed the blackout blinds, and at the click of a switch, a garish bulb with no shade lit up the room.
‘Home sweet home,’ he said.
She glanced around, trying not to be appalled at the dingy condition of the walls and the threadbare sofa.
‘I’ve only got one bedroom,’ he said, ‘and a box room. You won’t mind, will you?’
‘No,’ she said, heart sinking. He took her case to a small room little more than six feet end to end, with ancient flowered wallpaper. It was obviously never used. She squeezed in next to an iron bedstead and a small chest of drawers as Neil heaved her case onto the bed.
‘Cosy,’ she said, doing her best not to show her disappointment. She turned to him. ‘Thank you for putting me up. I really couldn’t have stood it in Glenkyle with Audrey Hamilton lording it over me. Did you know, she’s joining the WAAFs?’
