“
Leo had just finished reading this when the FANY girl from the decoding department came in with a new message.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’
Leo read, ‘Stuart killed by a bomb on June 9th. Contact impossible. Air raids all day and walk all night.’
She put the paper down and bowed her head to her desk. It was not the news of Stuart’s death that struck cold terror into her heart. It was tragic, of course, but he had not come from SOE and she had not had time to get to know him well. It was the image that those words conjured up that was hard to bear. Alix was with these people. She was in danger from bombs all day. She was having to walk all night. Leo thought back to the girl she had said goodbye to in Paris back in the spring of 1939, excited by the prospect of starting her course at the Sorbonne. Rumours of war had seemed so distant that neither of them had doubted that they would meet again in a few months.
”
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