The Tailor's Girl by Fiona McIntosh

nearly squealed in embarrassment at the familiar sight of Ben’s narrow shoulders and lean body. He was wearing the jumper his mother had knitted last year. It was tight, making him look even more skinny. ‘Yes . . . yes, sorry, Ben.’
    ‘What are you doing out here in the dark?’ he asked, as he skipped down the three steps onto the pavement to meet her.
    ‘Is it Eden?’ came his mother’s familiar voice.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Ben was suddenly at her side and the moon peeped out from behind the cloud. In its spotlight she’d arrived fully onto the stage of shame. An accusatory finger of light . . . or perhaps a reassuring caress of heavenly light that understood, that gave permission, that told her to follow her heart and be happy . . .
    Ben repeated his question, the moonlight painting the top of his short, wiry hair with silver, and she shook her head, forcing a smile. ‘Of course. I suddenly remembered something I’d forgotten. I’m sorry, I was just thinking it through.’
    His brow knitted but she saw relief ghost across his expression. ‘That’s not like you.’
    ‘Edie, dear, whatever are you doing standing out there in the shadows . . . in the freezing cold?’ his mother admonished.
    ‘Pardon?’ she said to Benjamin, buying time. Could they tell she’d been kissing another man? Then her mind snapped into cold fear. Had Tom kissed her neck? Yes, he had, briefly. It had felt amazingly seductive. She was sure it wouldn’t take much on her sensitive skin to draw the kind of bruise she’d seen on others. Edie touched her neck self-consciously, and as Ben helped her with her overcoat she loosened her scarf, terrified, trying to glimpse her neck in the mirror. Not a trace to be seen. Of course there wasn’t. There was nothing vulgar about Tom.
    She threw a look over her shoulder and out the open front door as Mrs Levi bustled back into the sitting room from the hallway, while Ben was hanging up her coat. He turned to close the door but in that moment Edie glimpsed a familiar shape across the road, standing on the common, and she knew Tom was watching her.
    She closed her eyes fleetingly and took a breath to steady herself.
Oh, Tom, whatever do we do now?

6
     
    Tom turned as the door of the Levi house closed and shut Edie off from him; he had seen that shy glance over her shoulder, though, and he sensed she knew he was out here, wishing he could steal her away from the family that was drawing her ever closer to its bosom. Was she thinking of their kiss and wanting more? His injured mind scrambled with fresh distress while his nerves still trilled the message of pent desire.
Edie!
If he never got his memory back and all he had was Edie, she would be enough. Ben could not have her!
    A lone nightingale sang above him and somewhere, for a few dazed moments, he was lost in a fraction of a memory of identical birdsong. The whizzing, horrific bang of bombs that took lives and shattered families suddenly echoed loudly in his thoughts and his head hurt. In his mind’s eye he saw the brave fall, smashed backwards, picked off like metal targets at a funfair, but these were men with families, with loves and dreams; these were men showing the ultimate courage, prepared to make the greatest sacrifice – and they were dead before they felt the cold hard ground of foreign soil. The nightingale sang harder as though it alone had the power to conjure his memories and he saw other soldiers staggering, bleeding, some having lost a limb, stupefied, and the images became far worse until he thought his head might explode. Then the vision dissolved and he was back in a quiet park of Golders Green and the nightingale was still singing, but only to impress a female, not to punish him.
    Nightingales . . . that’s right!
One of the nurses had told him other soldiers had remembered the call of these birds, seemingly unfazed by the shocking sounds of war, and how in the rare, overwhelming silences they