An Illicit rendezvous...

In my novel, The Girl from Simon's Bay, the heroine, Louise, agrees to meet her beau (lovely, old-fashioned word, isn't it?) in Cape Town... and potentially spend the weekend with him. The year is 1941, it is wartime - would David survive? why not seize the moment? - but even so this was a bold move for both of them.

If Louise had been spotted she would have faced shame and ostracism - especially as David is a married, white naval officer and Louise is mixed race...
I examined each of my fellow passengers on the train. I was wearing a scarf that matched my blue dress and covered my forehead. Hopefully I seemed just another nondescript coloured woman heading to work. No-one recognised me. But I hardly recognise myself caught up in such deliberate deceit.
For David, trapped in a marriage of convenience, Louise is the first woman he's truly loved and he's determined not to lose her even though he, too, risks alienation from his superiors and his family. They take a walk on the slopes of Table Mountain, close to where I have taken this photo, and look down on the harbour where David's warship, HMS Dorsetshire, is tied up. He is shortly due to leave.
I can't say when I'll be back.
I know. We'll have to wait for a favourable wind.
When they head to the railway station, they keep carefully apart.
Five months later, Louise's father meets her as she comes off duty at the Royal Naval Hospital in Simon's Town. "There's been another disaster. Japs caught some of our warships off Ceylon. At least two sunk."
"Which ships, Pa?"
"I probably shouldn't say."
She grabs his arm. "Which ships?"
"One of ours. That gunnery officer you nursed was on her. The Dorsetshire."