MARCH 1948
ONE
Evelyn spotted Stephen across the busy road. He was leaning against the railing outside the Hotel Russell, a grand old building on the eastern flank of the square, reading a paperback, his collar turned high about his throat. As he pulled out his pipe and rummaged around in his pockets for a light, Evelyn felt the sluice of anticipation; it was like encountering him for the first time, though they had in fact been meeting every Friday afternoon for the past year. Walking towards him, she observed him as a stranger might, taking in his crumpled overcoat, his loosened tie, his flushed cheeks. He whipped off his trilby and gave her a lopsided smile.
‘Ah, there you are, Evelyn.’
He clasped the felt brim, as if uncertain about what to do with his hands now he’d shoved the book and pipe away in his coat pocket. After all these months, they still weren’t quite sure how to greet one another. He finally nodded towards the hotel’s thé-au-lait terracotta entrance.
‘So, fancy that drink? I’m absolutely parched.’
He held out an arm by way of invitation, and as he followed her up the stairs and through the hotel’s revolving doors, Evelyn caught his familiar scent of pipe smoke, cologne and warm, damp hair.
They were seated by the dome window overlooking the square, their usual table. Though it was nearly five o’clock, the bar was empty apart from a man beside the piano with his head buried in a newspaper. Once the waitress, a big-boned girl with a Lancashire accent, had taken their orders, Stephen began to talk about his new commission. Since the war he had worked as an Italian translator— novels, mainly, as well as the occasional cache of documents for the embassy—and he had been invited by a professor in Rome to visit the university over the summer to deliver a paper and begin a new translation of Ovid…
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