All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

68: Nostalgia

"Anglais?" asked a voice from behind her, jolting her out of her reverie.

Posey startled so much that she bashed her head against the shelf. "Ouch!" Her forehead throbbed and her cheeks flushed as she lifted her gaze to meet that of the interrupter's.

"Oh! Sorry!" the man exclaimed, though he was very clearly fighting with everything he had to hold in a laugh. He was the shopkeeper, by the looks of him. "I didn't mean to make you jump, I was just wondering whether you were English, though now I'm up close I can tell you're American. Sorry, anyway. Didn't mean to make you jump."

There was something about this man that was familiar. Something in his smile, perhaps. He looked like someone she might have met once in a dream. Posey shook her head to clear the thought away. "It's okay." She rose to her feet, clenching her teeth against the shooting pain in her head, and tried to smile. "You're English. Where are you from?"

"Oxford," came his immediate reply with a somewhat proud grin. "Not the university, though. Just the city. Where are you from in the States?"

"Boston," said Posey, starting to smile in earnest. "My mom's English, though. From London. What's a Brit like you doing over here?"

The man shifted on his feet, almost imperceptibly but Posey was looking closely. There was definitely something familiar about him.

"Met a French girl," he replied, his smile practised and plastered on.

"In the service?" Posey wondered.

He nodded. "I was wounded and discharged. Moved over here once it was liberated."

It was the word 'wounded' that triggered the revelation. That word always made her think of John. "You're a downed airman," she said, forgetting her accent in her surprise. She recognised him from the pictures John had sent home after first being allocated his crew.

"I'm -"

"You knew my brother, didn't you? Flight Lieutenant Jonathan Wells? I think you were in his crew."

"Your brother -?!"

"Am I right?" Posey pressed, stepping forwards and scanning hastily over the rest of the shop for eavesdroppers. They were perfectly alone, however, as the morning commute raged on outside without them. "Do you know him? Or did you, rather?"

The man's eyes flitted around as he rubbed at the back of his neck. Clearly, she'd gotten him trapped. She knew the feeling. "Look," she went on, softening her tone in a bid to relax him, "I'm not going to tell or anything. There aren't any Nazis around here anymore but I won't tell either way. I just recognise you from John's photographs, I think, right at the beginning of the war. You knew him, didn't you?"

"Yes," the man admitted in a reluctant exhale. "You're John's brother, then? I didn't think he had one."

Posey grimaced. "A secret for a secret?" She took his furrowed brow as a yes. "He doesn't. I'm his sister."

"You're -"

"A woman pretending to be a man, yes, and I'm doing a rather good job of it, I think. It's a long story." The more she looked at him, the more she could see him in his RAF blue flight suit, stood beneath the wing of a plane with his arm slung around her brother, grinning beside him. She smiled, laughing to herself. "John is going to be so pleased to find out you're alive."

"John's alive?"

Posey's heart broke a little bit just then. "Yes. He's been in hospital for a while, lost his right hand and all of his toes to frostbite, but he's alive. A friend of yours - Daniel - died in hospital, though. I'm really sorry."