“He said they would say anything, tell me all kinds of lies, and I should prevent any attempt by a stranger to insinuate himself.” She blows out a stream of smoke. “Or herself.”

“He said that? Herself?”

“His exact words.”

“And what did you tell him?”

As I said, the light in here is feeble, because of the blackout and because we’re conserving, you know, for the war effort. And it’s cold and stuffy, and I feel as if I’m suffocating, and yet I can’t move, and neither can she. She’s folded her arms over her cardigan, and the end of the cigarette flares orange between her fingers. I think I see a twitch in the skin of her neck. Her pulse, thumping in the same rhythm as mine. I think of Thorpe, in his cold, damp cell made of stone, and whether his pulse makes this rhythm, whether this beat unites us, the three of us.

She reaches out to flick ash into the fireplace.

“I said I would be on my guard, of course. And then I took some castor oil and made myself vomit so I could take a few days off sick.”

“You did what?”

“We’ve got to get you out of London. He’ll be looking for you everywhere, and I daresay it won’t take him long to visit here.”

“But where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe,” she says. “Somewhere we can decide what’s to be done. Somewhere on a farm, so we can eat eggs and butter without having to register you for a damned ration card.”

“And where’s that?”

“Home.” Margaret tosses the cigarette in the fireplace. “Or rather, the house where Benedict and I were born.”

Elfriede

June 1905

(Florida)

On the day Wilfred returns to her, the weather dawns hot and auspicious, so Elfriede takes the children to the seashore while Charlotte stays home with a headache. Oh, a headache. A hangover, let’s call a spade a spade. Elfriede tells herself that’s how Charlotte copes with the grief.

Anyway, she doesn’t mind. Let Charlotte have her elixirs of whiskey and grief, while Elfriede has the children all to herself. Johann loves the seashore. Already he knows how to swim in the surf without being swept away, though Elfriede’s careful to keep him on the sand when the waves are too rough. He’s big and sturdy, like his father was; in fact, he’s so big and so sturdy, so whitely blond and so loyal, he might almost be Gerhard himself. During the moments she holds her son in her arms, she doesn’t feel the loss of his father at all.