Opening the door of her bedroom, she paused. The corridor outside her room was in chaos. Pictures had been pulled from the walls and were now lying on the floor without their gold frames. Heart beating fast, Mary started to hurry through the villa. Every room was the same—curtains had been torn down, ornaments lay smashed on the floor, much of the furniture had disappeared, and in the kitchen, the cupboards were open and the shelves bare. Everything of any value had vanished, and worst of all, there was no one there at all.

“Father? Daddy? Ayah?” Mary’s voice rose anxiously. She pushed the doors to the veranda open. The sun shone down brightly, but the garden was as deserted as the house. Mary clutched Jemima.

“Where have they all gone?” she whispered.

2

A Long Journey

Mary sat on a wooden bench on the deck of an enormous ship as it chugged across the vast ocean, leaving India and heading toward England. Her back was straight, and she stared silently up at the sky, holding Jemima in her arms. Nearby, a group of children was playing noisily on the deck, but Mary didn’t join in with them. It had been several weeks since she had woken up and found her home had been ransacked, but it felt like a lifetime ago.

No one had come to the house for two days, until two English officers turned up. They had been astonished to find her there—dirty, thirsty, hungry—and had taken her to the hospital. She had asked them where her father and mother were, but they had just told her to be a good girl and not to worry. At the hospital, a nurse gave her something to eat and drink, and had helped Mary bathe and change into clean clothes. Then Mary was seen by a doctor. Neither the nurse nor the doctor would answer her questions about her parents either.

As she waited in a small room, wondering when Daddy was going to come and take her home and what he would say when he found out that all the servants had vanished, she heard the two officers talking in a room next door.

“This is a frightful mess,” said one gravely. “Poor child. If only we had evacuated the family before the trouble broke out. The cholera epidemic couldn’t have come at a worse time for them.”

Mary pricked her ears. She knew that cholera was a disease that killed lots of people, but what did it have to do with her family?

“The doctor tells me her mother was struck down with cholera very suddenly. Her father rushed her here in the night, but it was too late,” the first officer continued.

Mary froze, foreboding running down her spine. Too late for what?

“The mother died that night and then the father died the next morning.”