Evening, high summer, overlooking a river, an adult voice singing in a garden.

Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui a le cœur gai … Sing, nightingale, sing, you whose heart is light …

Lotti picked Federico up and held him close again.

No more running. Federico was saved, but they were still going to be separated. She was still being sent away.

Lotti, whose heart was not light but heavy, walked slowly the rest of the distance to the Sparrowhawk, to make her final moments with Federico last.

Chapter Nine

Ben couldn’t sleep. After twisting and turning for hours in his berth, he pulled on his boots and sweater, gathered up his blanket, shook Elsie awake and went up with her onto the roof.

A strange day. First Lotti hadn’t come to fetch him for lessons as she usually did. Secondly, when he went to Clara’s alone, he found her door locked and a short note for him and Lotti pinned to its frame, explaining that she was going away. And thirdly …

Thirdly, this afternoon, another visit from Albert Skinner.

“Just wanted to let you know that I’ve written to the War Office,” Albert had told Ben. “Asked to know when that brother of yours is coming home. Thought, coming from a policeman, maybe they’d give an actual date. I’m away until Wednesday to visit my own boy. Never quick, these things, but it’s a few days since I wrote so hopefully there’ll be an answer by the time I’m back.”

That was all, but it had rocked Ben’s world.

Soon, Albert would know the truth. And then what would happen? Up on the roof of the Sparrowhawk, Ben wrapped his arms round his body and hugged himself miserably.

How often he and Sam had slept up here in summer! Never well, but better than in the stuffy cabin. And in early August, Nathan always came up too, to watch the Perseids. They sat bundled together under blankets, drinking endless tea, making wish after wish as shooting stars fell from the sky. Ben loved the Sparrowhawk always, but never more than at night.

What would he wish for tonight, if he saw a star? That was easy. He would wish for Sam to come back. No, for Sam never to have gone. For Sam never to have gone, and Nathan to still be alive, and for the whole war never to have happened.

Oh, where was his brother?

Elsie had fallen asleep again, but now something roused her from her slumber, and she scrambled to her feet with a short bark of recognition. Ben followed her gaze and saw Lotti and Federico walking toward the Sparrowhawk.