Elfriede knows better, of course. When the nightgown is on and the dressing gown draped over her hardened belly, she checks the dresser to make sure the Cloth of Tears sits in place, folded neatly in its box in the far corner. In her head, she hears Wilfred’s voice, over and over.

You cannot die.

I’m existing in you alone.

She settles herself in the armchair to wait for the doctor.

A mere hour and a half later, Elfriede gives birth to an enormous boy, nine pounds four ounces, as the British measure these things, burly and red-faced, squalling handsomely. The tuft of hair on his head is paler than his father’s but unmistakably ginger. Elfriede touches it with her finger as he nurses. “Well, there’s no doubt who’s his dear father,” Mrs. Thorpe says weepily, holding the entranced and dry-eyed Margaret close to her side.

“No doubt at all,” says Elfriede, and she waits for the blackness to descend.

Lulu

December 1943

(Scotland)

The drizzle comes in angry bursts against our backs, blowing in from the northeast. Margaret settles her chin inside the collar of her raincoat and her hands inside her pockets. We both wear rubber boots that squish against the grass as we walk. Mine are too big. Margaret tells me they belonged to Thorpe when he was thirteen or so. Just before he started sprouting up, she says.

Behind us, Dunnock Lodge is grim and wet and rambling, like Wuthering Heights or something. The slate roof gleams with rain. We tramp across a meadow that looks as if it used to be a lawn, and sure enough, a fountain emerges from the thickets. When I peer into the bowl, I see about three inches of brown water covering a layer of dead leaves.

“It’s where Mummy used to have garden parties for the officers’ wives,” Margaret says. “She tried so hard, and they never did like her, except for a few. She was so beautiful. Jolly foreign too, which set their backs up. And of course she wasn’t cheerful or chirpy, either, at least with them. She kept herself hidden from them.”

“Didn’t she have any friends at all?”

“One or two. I think they knew she had this dark place inside her, and they were afraid of it. They were afraid of getting sucked in. Even Granny. Only Daddy wasn’t afraid.”

The drizzle’s paused, and she’s smoking again, staring into the bowl of the fountain. Outdoors, her eyes are very blue, almost as blue as her brother’s. Her pale hair lashes against her cheek.

“You noticed a lot for a ten-year-old.”