Lotti nodded. “Then you do understand. I couldn’t breathe for loneliness at school, and the worst thing was none of the teachers cared. There was no point telling my aunt and uncle, because they wouldn’t have cared either, but I couldn’t go on like that. And Papa always said, if you don’t like something, you should try to change it. So first I tried to run away.”

“Where to?” asked Ben. “Back to Barton?”

Lotti hesitated, but it was too painful to explain that she had wanted to run all the way to France, to Moune, who didn’t write but was the only person left who had loved her once.

“Yes,” she said. “Back to Barton. I made it to the station, but the last train had gone, and they caught me. So then I realized the only way I would leave is if I got expelled. Hence stabbing the sewing mistress.” She paused, remembering the feel of her needle piercing the sewing mistress’s arm. There had been screams, and blood. “It was very satisfying.”

Ben was speechless, equal parts admiring and appalled.

“What did your aunt and uncle say?”

But this was something else Lotti didn’t want to talk about—Hubert Netherbury’s rage at Lotti’s scandalous behavior, the hard, humiliating slap across the face she had received at Great Barton station when she returned from school, in full view of the other passengers.

“They were a bit cross,” she said airily. “But the plan worked, because Uncle Hubert says now I’m nearly thirteen and don’t have to go to school by law, there’s no point wasting money on my education and I should be learning to Make Myself Useful to My Aunt instead.” Lotti rolled her eyes. “I have to do things like tidy her writing desk and sewing box, and mend clothes for the jumble sale at the Women’s Institute fête. She is obsessed with the Women’s Institute fête. She is running it this year and Lady Clarion, whom she worships because she is a proper aristocrat, is on the committee. The fête is to raise funds for returned servicemen and Lady Clarion says it is our patriotic duty to make as much money as possible, and Aunt Vera is desperate for her approval. Aunt Vera has this thing about Barton Lacey not really being hers—it’s actually mine—and she sees the fête as her way into high society. It’s not till June, but she already keeps having all these committee ladies in for awful coffee mornings where I have to hand round sandwiches. To be honest, I do wonder sometimes if it was worth being expelled from school for this, but then—Ben, you’re looking impatient.”

“I’m just wondering what this has to do with the dog,” Ben said honestly.