With her, trailing a few yards behind, was their evacuee, Stanley. He was a strange and somewhat charmless boy who scarcely spoke a word and was practically terrified of his own shadow. They were blackberry picking for Mrs Partridge, except so far the berries were few and far between – the wicker basket Allegra was carrying contained no more than a cupful.
In an effort to get Stanley to talk, she kept pointing out wild flowers to him in the hedgerow, as well as butterflies and birds. ‘Look,’ she said now, ‘can you see that?’
He looked at her blankly, then up into the sky to where she was indicating.
‘It’s a swallow,’ she said. ‘It’ll be leaving soon, flying home to somewhere warmer.’
Getting no response from him, she walked on. All her knowledge of birds, wild flowers and trees came from Elijah. He’d taught her when they’d been children, when he would take her to some of his favourite places. Initially she had had no interest in what he was showing her – not when Hope was the botanist of the family, and who wanted to be like Hope! – but gradually she had picked up on his enthusiasm and somehow it had all stuck.
She pointed out some willowherb, and then, just as she spotted a large and plentiful patch of blackberries, Stanley spoke. ‘I wish I could fly away,’ he said. Such was the mournful tone to his words, Allegra came to a stop and looked down at him.
‘Do you hate it here so very much?’
He nodded.
‘I felt the same way when I first arrived at Island House,’ she said. ‘Come to think of it, I was the same age as you. I hated the house and everyone in it. I was as miserable as anything. Maybe even more miserable than you.’
‘But you like it now, missus?’
‘Funnily enough, I do, and I never thought I’d say that. What is it about being here that you hate so much?’
‘I dunno.’ This was his standard reply to most questions.
‘Name one thing.’
He shrugged and stared back at her blankly. She looked at him with a frown of impatience, but then suddenly she saw her nine-year-old self in him. How stark and lonely her world had been back then, until she had found a friend in Elijah. Perhaps when Stanley started at the school in the village later in the week, he too would find a friend; after all, there were plenty of other evacuees here with whom he might feel he had something in common.
After they’d picked as many of the blackberries as they could reach, Allegra suggested they walk further along the lane in search of more. The boy’s response was his habitual shrug of indifference as he fell into step alongside her.
‘Don’t you like the countryside?’ she asked after some minutes had passed.
‘S’awright.’
‘Have you been to the country before?’
‘Me mum took me to the ’op fields in Kent once.’
‘And what did you do there?’
‘Whad’yer think, missus? We picked ’ops.’
‘What are ’ops?’
‘Doncha know?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking if I did.’
‘’Ops is what goes into beer.’
‘Oh, you mean, hops?’
‘That’s what I said, missus.’
Who’d have imagined it? Allegra thought with amusement as she popped a juicy ripe blackberry into her mouth. Me trying to make small talk to convince an angry little boy that he might enjoy being at Island House. Oh the irony! And how ironic was it that she, who had always been so concerned about maintaining her all-important bella figura, had regained her appetite and was suddenly eating like a horse and not caring one little bit about the weight she was gaining. Under Luigi’s ever-watchful eye, she had starved herself at times to please him. But her own vanity had played its part too – to be fat had been anathema to her. Now, at almost three months pregnant, she knew she had little choice in the matter and had accepted that the baby growing inside her was dictating the terms of her life; her body was no longer her own to do with as she pleased. There was, she had come to appreciate, a freedom in that acceptance.
This shift in her attitude was nothing short of extraordinary, but it was fuelled by a fierce instinct to protect the vulnerable child within her. It was an instinct she had never thought she would possess, and in some way it gave her the courage to admit to Hope and Kit, without a shred of shame, that she was expecting a baby. It was almost a disappointment to her that Arthur wasn’t around to share in her news; how she would have enjoyed standing up to his attempts to humiliate her.
To their credit, Kit and Hope had displayed only the merest trace of shock – well-brought-up girls in their world did not get themselves into this kind of trouble. But she had got herself into exactly that kind of trouble, and what was more, she was going to hold her head up high when the time came, when there would be no disguising the swelling that was already pressing against the fabric of her skirts and dresses.
