Clara promised, and waited. She waited as she finished university, and she waited in the hospital where she volunteered as a nurse, and though she had received no news of him for months, she was still waiting now. Her parents disapproved of Max so much they had kicked her out of their home. She had moved to Great Barton because nobody here knew her, and she had rented the lonely cottage by the canal so that when Max arrived no neighbors would pry on them. She had told her landlady that she was a writer looking for peace and quiet to finish her novel, and the landlady believed her because, as she told Mercy Jenkins in the baker’s queue, Clara with her spectacles and the general air she had of falling apart—all that red hair escaping its pins and her sweaters full of holes—well, she looked like a writer, didn’t she? And though it wasn’t exactly proper for a young lady to live all alone like that, everyone knew artists were mad.

It didn’t occur to anyone that Clara had a secret.

She hadn’t always been like this. At university Clara had been positively curvy, and worn her hair in a rich, swirling curtain down her back, and she had laughed a lot. As a nurse, she had been neat and efficient. But now …

Well, war and waiting did things to a person.

Really, Clara earned her living as a translator. After Malachy Campbell had gone, she took a pile of papers from the drawer in the kitchen table, made tea, forgot to drink it, picked up a pencil, hunted for a sharpener, found one in the fruit bowl and settled down to work. She tried to concentrate on her translation, which was about fertilizers and agricultural production, but her mind refused to settle. How her heart had leaped when Malachy knocked on the door, thinking … hoping, really … that it was Max! But then her heart leaped at every knock on the door. She pushed aside her translation, picked up a blank sheet of paper and began a letter to Max’s mother, then pushed that away too after a few lines, and went out for a walk instead.

Max’s mother never answered anyway.

Clara had passed the Sparrowhawk many times before and never paid it much attention, but today was different. Today for the first time, she heard voices on board.

She stepped closer, feeling curious, then stopped.

A girl and a boy sat cross-legged side by side with their backs to her on the roof of the boat, two dogs between them in a tangled heap. Clara narrowed her eyes. The larger dog was a black and white spaniel cross. The smaller one … Clara’s mouth formed a silent “Oh!”

The smaller one was Malachy Campbell’s stolen Chihuahua.

Probably, Clara should have said something.

A stolen dog!