Daphne’s father frowned. “I don’t know as that’s a good idea, lad. She’s Mrs. Rob Butcher, and there’s naught you can do about it.”

“I don’t want to,” Mike said.

Her father scowled.

“I mean, I don’t want to make trouble. I just need to talk to her about something. She wrote me a letter—about some men who were asking for me—and I need to ask her if she knows where I can get in touch with them. Or maybe you can help me. Daphne said they came in—”

Her father shook his head. “I know nothing about any men, and as for Daphne, she’s in Manchester with her husband.”

Manchester? That was more than two hundred miles from Saltram. It would take him at least two days to get there by train. If he could even get on one. They’d be jammed with soldiers going home on leave for Christmas.

“I don’t suppose you have a phone number where she can be reached?” Mike asked. “Or an address?”

“You’re not thinkin’ of goin’ there to make mischief, are you?”

“No, I just want to write to her,” Mike lied, hoping the address wouldn’t be a post office box.

It wasn’t. It was an address on King Street. “Though I had a letter from her yesterday saying their lodgings were very unsatisfactory,” Daphne’s father told him, “and they were hopin’ to find somethin’ better.”

Let’s hope they didn’t, Mike thought, writing the address down.

“If anyone comes in asking for me, tell them I can be reached here,” he said, giving him Mrs. Leary’s address and telephone number. He congratulated him on his daughter’s marriage, then set out for Manchester.

It didn’t take two days. It took nearly four of fully booked trains, delayed departures, missed connections, and compartments crammed full not only of soldiers but of civilians with packages, plum puddings, and, on one leg of the journey, an enormous unplucked Christmas goose. Apparently no one in England was obeying the government order posted in every station to “avoid unnecessary travel.”

He didn’t reach Manchester till late afternoon on December twenty-second—by which time Daphne and her new husband had found “something better.” He limped all the way to King Street, only to be sent back across town to Whitworth. And then the landlady, who looked exactly like Mrs. Rickett, wasn’t sure Daphne was in. “I’ll go and see,” she said, and left him standing at the door.

Please let her be in, he thought, leaning against the doorjamb to take the weight off his aching foot.

She was. She came halfway down the stairs and stopped, just like she had that first day in Saltram-on-Sea. “Why, Mike,” she said, her eyes widening, “I never expected to see you in Manchester. Whatever are you doing here?”

“I came to find you, to ask you—”

“But didn’t Dad tell you? Oh, dear, this is dreadful! I didn’t mean for you to find out like this! You’re a lovely boy, and now you’ve come all this way, but the thing is, I was married last week.”