Sister Agnes unbolts the front doors and those at the head of the line step forward. Each brings with them a receptacle of varying degrees of size and suitability. In the twelve months I have been helping out at the soup kitchen I have seen everything from tin mugs to chamber pots and even a horse’s nose bag presented to be filled with the lifesaving meal. Today there is a buzz among those waiting at the sight of the bread. I take up my position at the end of the last table and break chunks from the loaves to press into eager hands. Some of the children are pitifully thin. It pulls at my heart to see them so.

I have tried to explain to Mama that we cannot sit by and wait for the war to end; that there are those so much less fortunate than us who need our help. But she does not understand. The world she knew is vanishing, and nothing makes sense to her any longer. She has retreated inside her own version of how life is or how it was. If losing Papa tested her, losing Freddie broke her, as I had feared it would. Even now, years after that terrible night on Tower Bridge, I can see him falling, see the blade drawn across the whiteness of his throat. Hear the splash as he entered the water. I will always believe it was my fault that he died the way he did. I should have protected him from the Sentinels. I should have saved him. I failed him, and now he is dead and gone and he has taken the better part of Mama with him.

I can only thank the spirits that Louis survived. He told me later that he had summoned his magic as best he could but that the speed with which everything happened prevented him from saving himself unaided. He recounted how the three of them plunged deep into the Thames, unable to disentangle themselves from one another. Stricklend’s thug broke his neck as they hit the water. Louis said he felt my spirit guardians helping him, pulling him upward. It was his father’s summoned Goth who dragged Freddie from the depths and propelled him to the embankment. But my poor dear brother was beyond help. Death had him in its clutches once more and would not have its fingers pried loose a second time.