But at last I had a chance to breathe, with a long night at sea ahead. We weren’t in a cabin, but the ferry lounge was more comfortable than the train, and Frau von Arnim’s furs were incredibly warm and surprisingly light. I had never worn anything so soft. Johanna von Arnim sat straight and elegant in her own beaver coat and fox stole, with her back to the Isle of Man as we steamed away from it. Her thin powder-white hair peeped out beneath her fur hat, and her watery blue eyes gleamed as if they were wet.

“Good riddance to that godforsaken place,” she said abruptly. “Tell me, my dear, how does a Jamaican schoolgirl end up traipsing across Britain with a released German detainee?”

I swallowed. I hadn’t yet had to tell anyone about Mummy and Daddy being killed—my landladies were there when it happened, and it was nobody else’s business. Mrs. Campbell hadn’t even asked.

“I needed work,” I said evasively.

“No people of your own to go to?”

“Not here,” I said.

I bent over my cup of tea.

“You’re dreadfully young not to have any people,” said Johanna von Arnim.

I didn’t want to talk about it.

But I’d just make it worse for later if I was mysterious. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d have to tell someone, even if it was the first.

“My parents were killed by bombs last month,” I said. “In the same week. Not in the same place. My mother, she was called Carrie, Caroline Adair—she—she was riding in the front of a bus that fell into a crater when Balham tube station was bombed. You might have seen the pictures in the papers.”

“No, we aren’t allowed newspapers,” the old woman said gently. She cocked her head to favor her left ear, listening carefully over the ferry’s engines. “How terrible, and how unhappy you must be! Were you in the accident?”

I shook my head. This I couldn’t talk about—that I hadn’t been along. I hadn’t been there when it happened, I hadn’t been there when Mummy was taken away in the ambulance, I hadn’t been there when she died all alone in the hospital four days later. No one needed to know that. No one could fix that, and I didn’t want anyone to pretend to try.

“My father, Lenford Adair, was a merchant seaman on a ship that was torpedoed three days after my mother died,” I said carefully. “I didn’t find out until about two weeks later. Poor Daddy! I don’t know if he knew what happened to Mummy. I sent a telegram, but it might not have reached him. I can’t decide if I hope he did know, or if I hope he didn’t.” I swallowed again. “Hundreds of men drowned. He hadn’t been let in the Royal Navy because he wasn’t born in Europe, but the German U-boats don’t seem to care whether it’s a navy or civilian ship they’re sinking—”