The clock on the mantelpiece struck four and Meg broke away from him. ‘That can’t be the time. We must leave now.’ ‘We must meet again soon. I can’t bear to lose you again.’ She picked up her cardigan and draped it around her shoulders. ‘We’ll find a way to be together, but you must go before Pearl and her mother get back. God knows what Mrs Tostevin would say if she found a German officer in her drawing room.’ Rayner grinned reluctantly and brushed his lips against her cheek. ‘It’s going to be even harder to keep up pretences now.’ ‘I know, but we must. Nordhausen already suspects and so does Gerald. Anyway, never mind them. Please go now, and I’ll follow in a minute or two. We mustn’t be seen together.’ He was gone and Meg stared at herself in the mirror. The young woman with luminous eyes and tenderly curved lips smiling back at her was almost a stranger, so different from the thin-faced, hollow-eyed reflection that Meg had grown used to seeing every morning when she brushed her hair that she hardly recognised herself.
