“When you go upstairs, Louisa, would you run into Room Four and close the window? It was much too warm in there by the time I’d swept and put everything back.” She added, I think to herself, “I must get the collection man to check that gas-fire fitting when he fetches the money from the meters. It has come loose. That can’t be safe, and it’s my best room.”

Away I went upstairs feeling assaulted by frustration. I was angry at Nancy Campbell, who was paying me but who was clearly going to be difficult to get along with—and I was angry at myself, too, for not standing up to her. I didn’t understand why I was so moved by the strange German pilot I should by rights have hated, and why I so disliked the British officer who was supposed to be on my side.

It was after three o’clock. In another hour, this far north, it would start to get dark. I lit the fire in our room and left Jane with the tea tray while I went to close the window in the room down the passage.

Number Four wasn’t like ours at all—I could see why Nan said it was her best. It faced southeast, like ours, but had a big Victorian bay window. The room was tidy but freezing, because the middle sash was open wide, and wind made the curtains float and stir like ghosts. I had to hang my weight on the window frame, giving a jump that got my feet off the ground, before I could shift it to close it.

I stood looking out for a moment at the beautiful, bleak brown-and-gray view of the moor and village rooftops and North Sea. It wasn’t raining, but the wind made the Scotch pines bow on the ridge above the old house. Somewhere in the far sky a storm was blowing over, bad weather rushing west from Norway, across Scotland, out to the Atlantic.

My mind followed the wind west to the blue Caribbean Sea and back five years to Mummy’s thirty-fifth birthday. Daddy borrowed a rowboat and took all three of us across the water from Port Royal for a picnic on the coral beach at Lime Cay, and a storm rolled in late in the afternoon when we were on our way back. Daddy rowed for ages and couldn’t get any closer to the mainland, so he and Mummy each took an oar. I was at their feet, bundled in the picnic blanket. We were all soaked to the skin, and I had to bang the aluminum coffee pot with a spoon and sing “Land of Hope and Glory” to set the rhythm for their rowing.