Some Day I'll Find You (19 page)

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Part of you never stops looking for the person that’s gone,’ Oliver continued. ‘Your rational mind knows they’re never coming back, but sometimes the heart seizes
the moment and rules the head.’ He cleared his throat before going on.

‘A few months after your brother was killed, I could have
sworn
I saw him striding towards me from the ticket barrier at Victoria. He was in his uniform, smiling and waving at me.
Just remembering it now brings back some of the pleasure and shock I felt – but it turned out to be another young, fair-haired pilot; in fact, when we passed each other, he didn’t even
look particularly like John. And of course, he’d been waving at someone behind me – his girlfriend.’

Diana burst in. ‘No, no, Daddy, it wasn’t like that
at all
. I’ve had moments like the one you described. Remember that evening we were in the crush bar at Her
Majesty’s during the interval? I was guarding the drinks while you and Mummy were in the watchamacallits, you know, and I suddenly saw James coming into the bar with a woman. For a few
moments I was certain it was him, but as he came closer the illusion disappeared.

‘The same thing’s happened to me at other times, Daddy, so honestly, I know what you mean – but understand this:
I heard his voice
. It was unmistakable, and . .
.’

‘But you didn’t actually
see
him,’ her father interrupted in his turn. ‘You said that.’

‘But I sort of
did
, though. When the taxi was at the end of the road I saw his silhouette clearly through the open window. It’s hard to put into words, but everything about
the way he moved his head, the way he tilted it back as he spoke to the driver, the way he tapped on the back of the man’s seat, it was
typical
James. And although he was much too
far away for me to hear him, I
knew
he was telling the man off, telling him to get a move on and stop fannying about.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Mr Arnold after a thoughtful pause. ‘I’m going to light a cigarette.’

‘Good idea – me too.’

After a few moments he spoke again, smoke billowing from his mouth and nose. ‘Still there?’

‘Yes, Daddy.’

‘Right. Look. I accept you’ve had . . . well, an extraordinary experience, my dear. Naturally you’ve been left flustered and confused. But you must listen to me when I say:
it wasn’t him
. Your husband – forgive me, your
first
husband – was shot down and killed over France almost exactly eleven years ago.’

‘But—’

‘Wait, Diana. This is what I’m going to do. You’ll remember that you were far too upset at the time to read the official RAF report into what happened – the witness
statements by the other pilots who saw the whole thing, all the rest of it?’

‘Yes,’ Diana said in a small voice.

‘I’m going to send you those documents now. Can you bring yourself to read them after all this time?’

‘I – I think so.’

‘Good. And when you do, you’ll realise that what you thought you heard and saw today was impossible. James is dead, Diana. Ghosts don’t exist, and I must say I’ve never
heard of one haunting a Nice taxicab.’

Diana gave a small laugh. ‘I must sound pretty stupid and emotional, mustn’t I?’

‘Not at all, you’ve simply had an unusually intense example of something many others experience. Promise me you’ll read the RAF report when it gets there.’

‘I will. Listen, Daddy, I could really do with seeing you and Mummy, especially after this. I know it’s only been six weeks, but would you both come down here and stay? Get away from
all the gloom and doom back there? I was thinking of at least a fortnight; longer if you can manage.’

‘We’d love to, on one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We can talk about ghosts as much as you like, but there will be no conversations, whatsoever, about oranges.’

Diana’s laugh was interrupted by a burst of tone on the line and a moment later, it went dead.

The hotel receptionist covertly watched the young woman with the green eyes and stunning legs leave the phone booth. He had a good idea what the missing ‘friend’ must be up to,
wherever he was, the idiot. Some men didn’t know how lucky they were.

Diana told no one else of her encounter with the Doppelgänger, or ghost, or . . . what? What exactly had she heard and seen? Her thoughts veered wildly from extreme to
extreme; from absolute certainty that she had encountered her first husband, very much alive and in the flesh, to an almost equally firm conviction that her father was right, and the whole thing
had been a trick of the mind.

Both interpretations were finely balanced. But they were not quite equal and opposite. If there
was
a tipping of the scales, if she
had
to make the call, one way or the other,
it was towards the conclusion that she had, incredibly, inexplicably, encountered the living form of a dead man. Her own Lazarus.

The RAF report arrived three days later in a thick manila envelope covered in stamps.

‘One for you,’ Douglas said as he tossed it to her on his way back from the mailbox at the end of their drive. ‘Looks like your dad’s handwriting.’ He sat down
opposite her at the breakfast-table. ‘Where’s Stella?’

‘Gone for an early-morning dip,’ answered Diana abstractedly.

‘Aren’t you going to open it then?’ asked Douglas as he sliced the top off his boiled egg.

Diana extemporised. ‘No, I know what it is,’ she replied. ‘Daddy has a French client living in London who claims he’s been libelled in some letters to the papers. Daddy
thinks he’s wrong and he wants me to translate them into proper idiomatic French to show the man. I’m going to ask Emile – you know, the clerk in the villa rental agent’s
office, to help me.’

Diana rarely lied but when she did she was astonished at her facility for it.

‘Lucky Emile,’ Donald said, smiling at her. ‘He’s taken quite a fancy to you. When he was going through the rental paperwork here last month he went pink every time you
spoke to him.’

‘Don’t be silly, he’s just a boy.’ Diana wanted to close the conversation down. She hated lying and Douglas was so trusting. She changed the subject. ‘Is it
Marseilles today?’

‘Aye,’ Douglas nodded. ‘I’m
this
close to landing that shipping contract I was telling you about.’ He looked sadly at his egg. ‘I don’t really
have time to finish this – I’m late as it is. I’d better be off. Bye, darling.’ He kissed her cheek and left the kitchen.

Diana stared at the big brown envelope. Time to lay this to rest, she thought, and then smiled ruefully to herself. That was certainly apt. James would have liked that.

As she weighed the envelope in her hands, she felt apprehensive. It seemed almost as if she was about to disturb the bones of her dead husband and commit a kind of sacrilege.

But this was all nonsense. All the envelope contained was a dry, military report – something she should have had the courage to read more than ten years ago. Diana snatched a knife from
the table, pushed it under the gummed-down flap of the envelope, and sliced the package open. She upended it and shook out the contents: a thin file of two – no, three – sheets of lined
brown foolscap, held together with a slightly rusty paperclip. She slid the top sheet free and held it gently by her fingertips.

The heading, in faded red capitals, was direct enough.

*THIS DOCUMENT IS CLASSIFIED.*

Presumed
dead? What did that mean? The Arnolds had always been told that the fact of James’s death was in no doubt.

Diana began to read.

The first paragraphs briefly explained the squadron’s mission that afternoon. They had been sent to patrol the French side of the Channel between Dunkirk and Boulogne-sur-Mer. A mix of
Royal Navy ships, two destroyers and a gaggle of Corvettes were attempting to slip through the Channel at full speed, and the German Luftwaffe was expected to try and bomb them. Another RAF fighter
squadron was providing cover above the convoy itself, ready to take on the bombers; James’s squadron had been told to intercept the inevitable German fighter escort.

Enemy aircraft had duly appeared, and the Upminster Spitfires had quickly found themselves in a series of dogfights with a pack of Messerschmitt 109 fighters. They were estimated to be about
thirty in number – more than two-to-one against James’s squadron. Having absorbed this, Diana turned to the second page.

Diana felt suddenly cold. She’d never wanted, or needed, to know the precise details of James’s last moments. Even now she wasn’t sure she wanted to. She put
the sheet of paper back on the table and walked to the brushed steel fridge, where she poured herself a glass of water from a jug.

What on earth was she doing? Why rake up the past because her over-active imagination had made her act like an idiot? She stared at the musty RAF report on the other side of her gleaming
American kitchen and sipped the water.

. . . presumed
dead
.

Diana went back to the table.

The second page began with the name, rank and number of one of the pilots who had made it back home that day. Underneath was his sworn statement.

Bracing herself, Diana began to read.

The statement was signed in a boyish scribble, executed in fountain pen. Underneath was a separate note in a different hand and in a darker ink. Diana peered at it.

This officer killed on active duty 9th July 1940
.

Diana’s hands shook slightly. Behind the professional detachment of this young man’s statement lurked the scent of fear and death. Pity, too; for all the attempt to remain factual
and unemotional, the word ‘regret’ had managed to penetrate the dry text.

What must James have gone through in his awful last moments? She half-hoped he had been killed outright in his plane, rather than suffer the terror of that last dive, struggling with the useless
controls of a burning aircraft.

Presumed dead? Of course he had been killed, Diana thought, almost brutally; the presumption could hardly have been more reasonable.

She picked up the third and final page, which was somewhat shorter than the others. This was the second witness statement.

Again, the pilot’s name and identification number were quoted at the top of the page. It was P.O. Hobson, mentioned in the first statement. Diana thought she recognised the name as one her
brother and James had both mentioned in conversation. Hobson. Yes, he was the squadron joker. Diana had a faint but distinct memory of some prank involving the squadron leader’s car and a
giant pair of knickers – something to do with a riotous night out in the West End.

This time Diana’s eyes went straight to the bottom of the statement but there was no annotation to say that Hobson, too, had been killed, just the man’s moniker, signed in large,
flowing italics that managed somehow to convey a jaunty spirit, despite what was written above.

Diana turned to the final paragraph.