Maggie smiled at her. ‘Not Maggie the mouse?’

‘No, no!’ they chorused.

‘Maggie the mighty!’ Pam said firmly and Ray, sitting beside her, so quietly that, in the ensuing laughter, only Maggie could hear, squeezed her hand under the table and said, ‘Maggie the magnificent.’

* * *

When lunch was finished and her colleagues started to drift away from the table, Dakin the butler brought in the second post.

‘A letter for you, Miss Corbett,’ he said.

The envelope had a label stuck to the back: Opened by examiner 5,544.

Censored.

Finally, it had come: a letter from Mutti.

Liebe Maggie, she read. Maggie smiled, hearing Mutti’s voice in her head.

I was so happy to receive your letter and news and knowing that you and little Vi are well and away from the bombing in London.

I, too, am lucky. I find myself on a beautiful place called the Island of Man. Which is strange, because there are no men. No soldiers at all but hundreds of women in the town. All internees, like me. We are quite free except for the barbed wire which is to keep us in. And the sea, which keeps us in, also.

There are babies here and they are hugged and cuddled so often by all of us women, that the mothers have to pin notices on them asking please, do not kiss them. It is hard. We all miss our children very much.

I am staying in a hotel. It is nice and I am able to sew.

Maggie frowned. A hotel? That couldn’t possibly be true, could it? She would be in a prison camp, surely?

When we arrived in September, the weather was very good. We spent all the days on the beach! It was like our trip to Clacton. Happy times. Do you remember? Perfekt.

Some of the women here are so clever. Artists and writers and so forth. They are planning to make a university. Perhaps I will learn something!

Write soon, darling Maggie, and tell me all your news. We do not hear very much of the outside world. Only when someone new arrives.

Missing you so much, hoping and praying you are safe and well and HAPPY!

Mutti xxx

Maggie put the letter down and frowned. While she’d been reading it, everyone had slipped away. She was quite alone at the table.

It was wonderful to hear from Mutti after all this time but what on earth was all this nonsense about beaches, sunshine, a hotel and a university? That sounded like pure fantasy. Was she quite right in the head? Maggie read through the letter again.