“What about your room? Perhaps you’d like to see that instead?” She lifted him from his seat again. He said nothing. He didn’t resist, but when she pushed him into the corridor he ran down it.

“In there Ian, that’s right,” she said, running after him. He disappeared into his room, but when she got there she saw he’d hidden under his bed.

She tried for ages to get him out.

“Please, Ian. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

He crept further in.

“Aren’t you hungry? I can make boiled eggs and soldiers.”

He pulled his teddy closer.

“You can’t stay under there for ever.”

He didn’t move.

“I shall have to pull you.”

She tried, but he kicked so hard her knuckle bled.

Joan, 1926

26

Joan, 1926

The bell of Bryanston Square rang at twenty-seven minutes past four. When she’d buttoned his coat and put her cheek to his, not more than an hour ago, she’d said to Nanny Duncan: “He need not stay long, do you understand?” Nanny Duncan had nodded. She was an excellent woman, firm and correct; she’d come within a week of the children. Joan kept her hand on Ian’s shoulder. “You are to leave sharply at four-thirty. No dallying. Do not be persuaded to linger. You must hold onto him tightly, and not be drawn into questioning.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Duncan’s hat was squarely on her head, and her gloved hand was ready to take his.

“And under no circumstances are you to be persuaded to leave the room. He must not be out of your sight for an instant.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Duncan had replied.

She’d gone up to the drawing room and waited. She’d made her driver do the trip the day before just to be sure of distance and time. She knew exactly how long it would take. Finetta had been somewhere – upstairs, or in the library. She was a resourceful little girl. She didn’t seem to mind being left alone.

So when the bell rang at four twenty-seven, Joan was not expecting it, and she spilled her liquorice tisane down her front. Nanny Duncan’s hat was not square on her head anymore; it was cocked sideways, as if she’d been running. But her face wasn’t red. It was ashen. She held out a note.

I have decided that Ian should live with me. Enid

“She was so quick. She just took him. She grabbed him from me, I couldn’t have expected it, she grabbed him and—” Words were pouring out of Nanny Duncan, but Joan wasn’t listening. Pat came clattering down the stairs. “What is it?”

She must have been screaming. The note was crushed in her fingers.

“Go back to your book,” said Pat to Finetta who’d appeared in the hall too.

“She’s taken him,” said Joan.

“Come upstairs,” Pat held her.

“I can’t move.”