Another group arrived and set up outside one of the turquoise wooden beach-huts, the father battling the wind to erect deck chairs in front of the opened doors, the mother brewing tea on a camp stove. The three children ran up and down the grass concourse, then started a game of hide-and-seek between the huts. These simplest of activities were at the root of Alice’s sadness, as she would never be able to do them with her own family. Her mother had been right about that: apart from the two of them, there was no one to be family for her baby.

She squinted, scanning the seafront again as she looked for Ruth. It went for miles, the grass-verged road a black ribbon behind her, the gray crisscross of barbed wire along the beach a reminder that their island was under siege. And further ahead still, a veil of blue sky, the aquamarine of a painted handrail, the steel-gray of the ocean—striations of color stretching as far as the eye could see. On clear days like this, she imagined she could see right across the channel, and she searched its choppy surface for any sign of boats as she thought about the young men they’d carried away. It was daft, she knew, but they were out there somewhere, lost to England for now. There was no sign of Ruth either.

Alice had decided to wait another five minutes when she felt a familiar sensation—a frantic flurry—and placed her hand on her belly as a tiny elbow or knee pushed against the skin. She left her hand there, feeling the tiny prods as she tried again to read, but the gulls were getting ever braver, their screeching louder, until they dive-bombed a couple on the bench next to her in an attempt to steal some fish and chips.