Free A Kestrel Rising by S A Laybourn

from, but they seemed endless and she let them come until exhaustion overwhelmed her and even her sorrow could not hold back sleep.
     
    * * * *
     
    Ilona woke to twilight and silence. It took her a few moments to realize where she was and to realize that she was still in her uniform. She rose and undressed, finding a nightdress that had been left out for her. It was cool against her skin. She sat down on the window seat and gazed at the sweep of lawn. The trees cast long, blue shadows across the grass and the sun was caught in the treetops as it began to slide into the west. She rested her chin on her knees and wept. Ian would never see this and she had wanted to bring him here to show him why home was so important to her, why she loved this house. She felt tired and empty.
    “I love you so much,” she whispered.
    She sat in silence, listening to the plaintive call of a dove but there was no answer. She looked at the rumpled bed, the pillow and the box, still unopened. Ilona picked it up and returned to the window seat. The string fell away beneath her fingers. She lifted the lid and set it aside, not knowing what to expect and half afraid of the consequences. There was a book—an anthology of poetry. She held it in her hands and it fell open to a well-thumbed page and to a dried sprig of heather that marked one poem. She squinted in the fading light and read it, imagined Ian’s voice speaking Robert Burns’ words as he had, more than once, to her.
     
    My love is like a red, red rose
    That’s newly sprung in June…
     
    The tears slipped onto the page. Ilona touched the heather with a cautious finger, afraid that it would fall apart. For a moment, she was on a wild moor, listening to the bees while Ian slept in her arms. That day belonged to another Ilona. She leaned back and closed her eyes, and almost heard him—a soft whisper, but it was only the curtains in the breeze. She looked back into the box. She didn’t remember this photograph but she remembered the day. The War Office had sent a photographer to take some pictures. There had been the usual ones, of the squadron in their flight overalls all lined up and grinning in front of one of the Blenheims. Ilona had been asked to drive them out to the runway. The men had wanted her in the photograph because they’d said she was as much a part of the squadron as they were. She had been too embarrassed to accept and she had been with Ian while the photographer had taken informal pictures. The picture in the box took her by surprise because she hadn’t realized the photographer was there. He had captured a moment—Ian, his hair lifted by the wind, leaning against the fuselage of his plane, talking to her. They weren’t touching in the photo but any observer would have known what was between them by the way she had been looking up at him and laughing. On the back, in his inelegant scrawl, Ian had written, Ilke and me, Catterick, 2nd March, 1940. She moved her finger across the photograph, touching the place where his hair was. The ache inside her became huge once more. All that remained of him was a book, a sprig of heather and this photograph—a moment of happiness frozen in time. Ian and Ilke forever smiling at each other, and it hurt too much to look at it anymore. She placed it back in the box with the book and put the lid back on. She cried again while the twilight gave way to a night illuminated by a Bomber’s moon.
     
    * * * *
     
    Her mother woke her in the morning, slipping into the room with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. She sat on the bed and waited until Ilona finished her breakfast.
    “How do you feel, darling?”
    “Drained,” she replied. “Empty, exhausted.”
    “I know, sweetheart. I remember all too well.”
    She glanced at her. “You do?”
    Her mother sighed and took her hand. “I’ve been through what you’re going through, Ilke, during the last war. Your father said I should tell you everything because you need to know, and he