The Officer's Wife

THE OFFICER’S WIFE CATHERINE LAW CONTENTS Prologue Book 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 Book Two Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Book Three Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Epilogue Acknowledgments Author’s note More from Catherine Law About the Author About Boldwood Books PROLOGUE ELISE, AUGUST 1932 The beach was hers: the water, blue and wide, waves cresting in the salty air. Her ankles sank into the sand and, all around her, she could hear the sound of the sea. Sitting down, she unbuckled her sandals, bare toes massaging the granular surface, ears filled by the wisps of the breeze. Not a day for sitting on the beach, yet a family had erected a stripey wind break under the chalk cliff and were huddling together; she could see their tea dress, newspaper and straw hat flinching in the wind. The man wore a bowler. A boy squatted with his back to his parents, bashing the bottom of an upended bucket, hopeful for a sandcastle. The chalk stack stood to Elise’s right, beyond it, the rockpools. But she’d have to walk past the family. The boy lifted his bucket and the castle collapsed. He shrugged. His whoop of laughter, the mock outrage on his face made Elise smile and as she hurried past, her joy joined in with his. A passage of wet sand lay between cliff and stack, guarded by the tide. Elise waited, watching the rhythm of the water. When one of the crashing waves, brimming with seaweed, retreated, she made a dash for it, running, but her summer dress became soaked as another wave, as slick as mercury, caught her and made her yelp. On the other side, in the little horseshoe cove enclosed by pearly-white cliffs, the air fell still. She set her sandals down in a safe spot and started to pick her way over the pavement of rocks, bare feet settling in crevices, finding a path, gathering the harvest of seaweed her mother required for her kitchen and medicine cabinet. Little sandpipers danced delicately over colonies of limpets and the winking sun made the pools iridescent. Below the surface, tiny crabs scuttled, and crimson urchins basked. Elise squatted down, carefully tugged at specimens of bladderwrack and Irish moss and began to fill her basket. Sea lettuce floated like green hair, a miniature underwater forest. A mermaid’s purse drifted past her fingertips. She plucked it from the water. The leathery pod glistened, the fronds curling over her fingers. ‘Isn’t that stealing?’ came a voice. ‘Isn’t there a law against that?’ Elise looked up, peeled her hair from over her face and tucked it behind her ear. The boy stood where spent waves foamed on the sand, his bare feet wriggling. One of his braces dangled. ‘I’m doing errands for my ma,’ she called back. ‘I’m not stealing any wreckage.’ A tiny white lie. She often presented her mother with sea-polished shards of ships’ crockery, rusted pennies and pieces of old rope spilled from the hundreds of vessels that lay in the graveyard of the Goodwin Sands. The boy gave a shrug of his shoulders and turned as if to go, and yet he dawdled, hands in pockets, his attention drawn to her. She bent to the rockpool, keeping him at the tail of her eye. ‘The sand further up the beach is no good for sandcastles,’ she said. ‘You need to be closer to the sea. Good damp sand is needed.’ ‘I should know better.’ She spotted his rolled-up trousers, wet at the bottom. ‘You got caught running through the gap.’ ‘Yep. Not quick enough.’ ‘Same here.’ He took tentative steps into the water, his dark hair lifting in the breeze. ‘Ouch. It’s colder than it looks,’ he said. ‘Mother keeps complaining about the wind and the sand, wants us to leave. She says it is even getting into her teeth. Father keeps saying it’s supposed to be summer. We’re supposed to be on holiday. Are you on holiday?’ ‘No, I live here.’ He glanced around at the beach. ‘Here?’ Elise laughed, perched her basket on a rock. ‘No, at Margate. A mile or so that-a-way,’ She pointed over her shoulder. ‘I’m here nearly every day in the holidays. But I like the beach best in wintertime.’ She gazed at the pale horizon and back at the cliff face. She knew the sea to be as beautiful as it could be dangerous, and, close up, the pristine white chalk complex and dirty. ‘Do you like it?’ He shrugged. ‘Mother didn’t want to go to Margate. She thought it wasn’t our sort of place. We’re at the Grand at Ramsgate, overlooking the Royal Harbour.’ ‘How posh.’ At her laugh, his cheeks went red. He dug his toes into the wet sand, lifted chunks, scattered them. He turned to walk away. Seagulls rose like white flags above the cliffs and the waves raced in, licking Elise’s ankles. A sharp wave swamped the rock where she perched, the thrilling coldness fizzing over her legs. She stood, dripping, grabbed her basket and picked her way back. He turned back, stopped to watch her progress, gave her an amused smile. ‘The tide is turning; that’s why it’s so wild,’ she called out. She paused to choose the best route, but her foot slipped, and her knee slammed down on to a jagged rock. Her palms grazed, water to her elbows. A scream hissed through her teeth. ‘Are you all right?’ The boy waded towards her, hopping over pools, ‘You’re bleeding.’ A stream of red coursed down her shin and over her ankle bone. She lifted the hem of her dress. The cut was raw and curved like a smile. ‘Quickly, come on.’ He grabbed her arm, his fingers firm at her elbow, pinning