With the door firmly closed, she switched on the light and sat on the edge of William’s bed, gazing around at the cupboards they’d hidden in and the furniture they’d made makeshift camps from. A locked glass cabinet held souvenirs and their father’s gun, with which he’d taught them both to shoot when they’d gone hunting in the countryside. Soccer cards were still stuck to the wall above William’s bed: Arsenal’s winning team from the 1936 FA Cup Final. He’d gone with their father, returning home more excited than she’d ever seen him before, face lit up, talking twenty to the dozen. The team had only won by one goal, but they were both so exhilarated, which she understood only came from being a true sports fan. Their family dinner that night was a real celebration, as if Christmas had come early. She remembered the occasion well because it was one of their last meals together.

And what if William were alive now? Would he be as shocked and appalled as Ruth, or would he look to punish Rupert; perhaps make him marry Alice? She wasn’t sure how William would have reacted to the awful scenes when Ruth had first found out, or Alice’s refusal to put the baby up for adoption as her mother had initially insisted she should. Would William or their father have agreed with Ruth that Alice had ruined her life?

Alice spread her fingers across the top of William’s eiderdown, feeling the bumps of the well-worn fabric and the damp of the untouched bed, and thought about the day her mother had come up with the plan. Alice had felt disbelief and then warm gratitude flood through her. It had seemed that Ruth’s motivation flourished from either duty or the protective instincts of a mother, and Alice had felt relief—that was, until Ruth had looked at her with disdain and said, “Thank the Lord that your father’s not here to see you like this.”

Four

New York, March 1943