Secrets of a Charmed Life Read Online Free

on London’s female population and had needed only the interview to write the paper and be done with it. When the woman I was to interview died, it was too late to change the subject matter without setting myself so far back that I would never finish the paper on time. I had mentioned as much to Professor Briswell, just in passing, and he had told me that an elderly friend in his family might be convinced to help me out. This person was one to decline interviews, though, even regarding her watercolors forwhich she was known throughout the southwest of England. He’d ask her anyway and tell her I was in a tight spot. But he said I should expect her to say no.
    â€œHe told me that you typically decline interviews,” I say.
    She smiles. “That’s all?”
    â€œHe said you are known for your watercolors. I love your work, by the way.”
    â€œAh, yes. My Umbrella Girls.”
    I turn my head in the direction of one of the more prominent paintings in the room: A young girl in a pink dress is walking through a field of glistening-wet daisies and holding the trademark red-and-white polka-dot umbrella. A brave sun is peeking through clouds that are plump with purpose. “Have you always painted girls with umbrellas?”
    â€œNo. Not always.” Her answer is swift and without hesitation. But the way she elongates the last word tells me there is more behind the answer. She doesn’t offer more even though I wait for it.
    â€œTell me, Kendra,” Isabel says after a pause. “What is it about the Blitz that you would like to know? I should think there are dozens of books out there. What information do you lack that you cannot read in a book?”
    I fumble for an answer. “Well, uh, aside from that I’m required to interview someone, I think . . . I think information is only half of any story about people. Personal experience is the other part. I can’t ask a book what it was like to survive the bombs.”
    Isabel cocks her head to one side. “Is that what you want to ask me? What it was like to have my home bombed?”
    It occurs to me that I posed a rather elementaryquestion with surely an equally elementary answer. I am suddenly superbly underconfident about all my questions. I glance at the notepad in my lap and every bulleted sentence looks superficial to me.
    What was it like in the shelter night after night?
    Were you afraid?
    Did you lose someone you loved or cared about?
    Did you wonder if it would ever end?
    â€œAre you going to turn that thing on?”
    I snap my head up. Isabel is pointing to my little voice recorder on the coffee table. “Do you mind?”
    â€œYou may as well, seeing as you brought it.”
    As I lean toward the table to press the RECORD button, the notepad falls off my lap and onto the thick Persian carpet at my feet.
    As my fingers close around the tablet, I realize that there is really only one question to ask this woman who for seventy years has refused all interviews, and who told me not ten minutes ago when she told Beryl to shut the door that she would say only what she wanted to.
    I place the pad on the seat cushion next to me. “What would you like to tell me about the war, Isabel?”
    She smiles at me, pleased and perhaps impressed that I figured out so quickly that this is the one question she will answer.
    She pauses for another moment and then says, “Well, first off, I’m not ninety-three. And my name’s not Isabel.”

Two

    EMMY
    London, England
    1940
    THE wedding dress in the display window frothed like uncorked champagne, bubbling toward Emmy Downtree as she stood on the other side of the broken glass. Glittering shards lay sprinkled about the gown’s ample skirt, sparkling as if they belonged there. Yellow ribbons streamed from behind the pouty-lipped mannequin, simulating a golden, unaware sun. At Emmy’s feet, jagged splinters were strewn on the sidewalk at menacing