“I suppose you’ve heard the news?” Alice said, relieved that Ursula had stopped questioning her.

“About Germany invading Tunisia?”

“No, far more significant than that,” Alice said, trying to hide her smile. “The Church has decided that women don’t have to wear hats anymore. Can you imagine? How scandalous!”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m going with Mum on Sunday—hatless.”

This had the desired effect: Ursula laughed. If she’d been angry with Alice or suspected anything, then at least she appeared to have forgotten it.

Three

The day hadn’t gone as Alice had expected, leaving her with a deep unease, so she sneaked away early—before they could make a fuss of her leaving—and hoped the London Zoo would be the sanctuary it always had been. But this visit needed to be quick and before dusk when it closed, a brief good-bye; she would see the new black swans, finish the journal and get home before her mother worried where she was.

She took her usual route through the North Gate, crossing in front of the Victorian redbrick ticket house, the aviaries and the darkened Reptile House, then along the Broad Walk. London Zoo—or Regent’s Park Zoo, as the locals called it—was only thirty-five acres, but it took time to navigate the main garden, and a late-afternoon fog lingered in the air, reducing visibility.

Memories lurked in all the shadowy corners: the chimpanzee tea parties, feeding hay to the hippos and taking camel rides. Her father, Frederick—or Freddie, as everyone had known him—had been one of the keepers when he’d come back from the Great War, and so Alice and William had spent their holidays and most weekends at the zoo. She’d kept coming as an adult, and had even been there the day that Rota the lion arrived. He had growled at the keepers as they’d ushered him from his crate into a walled enclosure, then he’d stood on the highest rock and roared at the sky. But this afternoon Alice couldn’t hear Rota or his cubs, and the zoo would soon be closing for the day.

Shivering, she wove her way to the Bears’ Den, peering inside to see if they were still awake. She could only make out vague outlines of russet shapes between the iron bars, mountains in a landscape of hay. She carried on toward Three Island Pond; it had been one of her and William’s favorite childhood spots, with its colorful tapestry of trees and the flamingos, which their father never tired of telling them were the only birds to feed with their heads upside down.