The Schoolteacher of Saint-Michel: a heartrending wartime story of courage and the power of hope

by Sarah Steele

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The war taught her to fight. The children taught her to hope... ** PRE-ORDER THE BEAUTIFUL NEW NOVEL FROM SARAH STEELE ** 'A beautifully worked tale of bravery, woven into the reality of a time we can't forget' Mandy Robotham, author of The Berlin Girl 'An engaging tale of courage and friendship. A triumph!' Gill Paul, author of Jackie and Maria From the USA Today bestselling author, The Schoolteacher of Saint Michel is a heartrending and deeply moving story of love, hope and friendship in World War II. This exquisitely beautiful novel is perfect for readers of The Postmistress, Lilac Girls and The Girl from Vichy. 'An emotional, beautifully constructed read. I loved the way the clues from the past and present slowly knitted together, answering the questions that had been missing their answers for so long ' Jill Mansell 'Gripping, at times heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting, I found this beautifully written novel impossible to put down' Katie Fforde 'The Schoolteacher of Saint-Michel really draws the reader in. Evocative writing and the storytelling is masterful...' Felicity Hayes-McCoy ' My darling girl, I need you to find someone for me . . .' France, 1942. At the end of the day, the schoolteacher releases her pupils. She checks they have their identity passes, and warns them not to stop until the German guards have let them through the barrier that separates occupied France from Free France. As the little ones fly across the border and into their mothers' arms, she breathes a sigh of relief. No one is safe now. Not even the children. Berkshire, present day. A letter left to her by her beloved late grandmother Gigi takes Hannah Stone on a journey deep into the heart of the Dordogne landscape. As she begins to unravel a forgotten history of wartime bravery and sacrifice, she discovers the heartrending secret that binds her grandmother to a village schoolteacher, the remarkable Lucie Laval . . . A story of friendship, courage and hope, The Schoolteacher of Saint Michel is an unforgettable read. Readers adored The Missing Pieces of Nancy Moon : ' Outstandingly beautiful. This book took my breath away. A sheer joy' 'OMG WHAT A BOOK. Fabulously, beautifully written book. It definitely kept me hooked. This story is full of everything - love, heartache and loss' 'One of the best books I have read this year. It has it all - love, mystery, deceit and a secret. Five stars all the way' 'A wonderful book, which took me on a journey and stayed with me for days afterwards' 'A captivating read of secrets untold. A moving story which I read in one day. Many twists and turns enhanced this gripping novel and kept me enthralled' 'I loved this story of love, friendship and hope. It's perfect'

Release date: June 24, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 384

Sample

In the peaceful pause between day and night, she steps out into the long shadows of the orchard, its treetops brushed with splashes of coral and gold. She weaves around the trees, her basket pressed against her hip, plucking the ripest cherries for her table, as she has done for countless harvests in this little corner of France.

Suddenly, like the deer in the woods beyond the stream, she freezes as dark clouds bubble on the horizon, extinguishing the last of the sun’s rays. Thunderous booms echo across the soft hills as bright flashes of light dance like fireflies in the distance. Yet this strange summer storm will not bring the release of the rain the parched ground craves, nor break the crackling tension in the air. And in the meantime, life must go on, even if it is a shadow of the lives they knew not so long ago. The children must go to school, the fields must be ploughed, meals prepared, livings made, prayers said in the cool, dark church, and the summer harvest collected.

A squadron of planes flies low overhead, shaking the ground as they mimic the annual migration of geese, and she quickly fills the basket before hurrying inside. She glances back, all the grief of the world in her eyes as she searches the darkness, then pulls the shutters closed against the night. They have survived another day.

Gigi woke suddenly, her frail heart tapping out a frantic rhythm. Even after all these years, long-buried memories of the war still floated to the surface of her dreams as though it were yesterday, urging her not to forget the people she had left behind, and the debt she owed them.

She looked out of the window as a flurry of petals caught the breeze, a candyfloss cloud tumbling along the street, as blossom drifts gathered in gutters and around tree roots that burst up through the grey London pavement. How many springs had she watched the monochrome scene transform itself into a Japanese watercolour? And each spring the blossom awakened the burden that dragged on her like heavy fruit on the branch.

A group of young mothers walked past the wide bay window, babies in pushchairs in front of them and trailing toddlers behind. She watched a little boy stop at the tree outside, spinning around its trunk and laughing, and she was transported again to those long-gone days of her dreams.

She closed her eyes once more, and like an old cine film on a whirring projector, images of her beloved France flickered before her: the sun-bleached orchard and the shallow stream bouncing diamonds of light across its bubbling surface; a couple dancing beneath the trees to the strains of an old folk song while children wove around them, gorging themselves on sweet, sticky cherries, as for a brief moment the war raging across Europe was forgotten. This was how she wanted to remember her motherland during those terrible times – the memories of dark woods and dangerous city streets, damp cellars and abandoned buildings were too painful for her old heart to recall.

She looked now at the photographs on the mantelpiece: more than most, she understood the value of family, love, loyalty; knew how far it was possible to go in order to protect those one cared for. She knew too that the ties formed all those years ago had never weakened, and that those she had left behind would always be a part of her.

Again she felt her breath catch. She had become accustomed to this now: her heart was indeed broken, fighting to complete its lifetime’s allocation of beats. Only difficult, invasive surgery could help her now, and she was too tired. She had lived her life as best she could, and there was only one thing left undone, one debt unpaid.

She had waited too long. She could see that now. There would be no more springs, no more time to put things right unless she gave her story to another.

She reached across to the little table beside her, and picked up a photograph of her granddaughter as a little girl. She had been lucky: of course she adored her son, but the easy friendship with dear Hannah that had grown over the years was a gift she cherished. Gigi had passed on to Hannah the arts of perfect pastry and an exquisitely tied silk scarf, the bond between them as close as mother and daughter. And now that little girl had her own life and her own love, her own pain: her dear, kind Hannah who reminded Gigi so much of someone from her distant past, the bittersweet memories of those war-ravaged times tugging at her heart.

Hannah, her petite fille, who understood what it was to live with something that ate away at you, and for whom she prayed this task might offer some balm.

Hannah, who might put things right for her.

She eased herself out of the chair, wincing as a pain shot down her arm, and fetched her writing paper and an envelope from the old bureau. Her arthritic hand paused over the tissue-thin paper, ink pooling at the expectant nib of her pen as she searched for the words.

My darling Hannah, she finally began, breaking off only to catch her rapidly shortening breath. And then, within a few short lines, it was done, and she folded the letter inside the delicate lilac envelope. The effort had drained her, and her beautiful copperplate handwriting wavered as she wrote Hannah’s name, the final h trailing across the paper.

She placed the letter beside her on the table and closed her eyes once more, unable to resist the weight of her eyelids and the sleep that overcame her like a sedative, so that dreams and memories were indistinguishable as she once again stood in a shady orchard, smelling the sun-warmed grass as a sudden peace wrapped its arms around her.

She had plucked the heavy fruit from the branch and handed it to one she trusted, and at last her heart was free.

How did the leap from Friday to Friday always take her by surprise, when the last two hours of the school week lasted an eternity? Early summer had kicked in, and the cramped classroom was stuffy, the post-lunch children unresponsive, so that Hannah nearly gave up the lumpen class discussion about Amazonian deforestation and stuck a David Attenborough DVD on. Finally the last worksheet was handed in, reading books checked out, PE bags taken home for washing.

Out in the corridor, thirty weekend-ready Year Sixes chattered shrilly as they grabbed coats and lunch boxes. How did they have so much energy? Unlike Hannah, they hadn’t run an after-school club every night of the week, or been here until nine o’clock the previous evening, smiling at a string of parents as she worked through thirty sets of predicted grades and euphemised her way around a sliding scale of behaviour. Nor had they had to spend the evening avoiding the eye of those fathers whose interest was as much in Miss Stone’s big brown eyes and long legs as it was in their child’s performance, and the glares of their quietly simmering wives.

Primrose Park Primary School was always going to make for an interesting conversation: the less fashionable of two primary schools in the small market town where Hannah had grown up, it was fed by a mixture of children from social housing, and those of commuting professionals tempted by its before- and after-school clubs. ‘You know you’re just a free babysitter, right?’ her friend Caitlin often reminded her. And yes, she was sometimes, but no one was forcing her to do it. And unlike some in the staff room, she was at Primrose Park because she loved it. For Hannah, teaching was about making sure every child got a fair chance, and if that meant bringing in home-made muesli muffins each morning for breakfast club and spending lunch hours helping struggling kids, then so be it. And when she occasionally received a letter from an ex-pupil telling her they had passed their City & Guilds and got their dream job, or were about to become the first in their family to go to university, it was worth every Ofsted inspection and every playground scuffle.

‘Hey, aren’t you going home?’ she said, seeing one last straggler tidying away stacks of workbooks. It was always Freddie who volunteered to help, looked out for the little ones in the playground and acted as peacemaker when tempers frayed between hormonal girls. ‘You’ve been quiet today, Freddie. Everything OK?’

He shrugged, but before Hannah could press him further, Liam Johnson appeared in the doorway. ‘You comin’, Fred?’ he said in his booming pre-pubescent voice.

Hannah took the books from Freddie and smiled. ‘Go on. I’ll finish this.’

‘Thanks,’ he mumbled, then scooted out of the door to join the other Year Six students racing across the playground and into the weekend.

Friday night. She should be planning a weekend of excitement. Instead, it would be a hot bath and an early night, then a couple of days looking after her father. It wasn’t as though she wanted to go out anyway. She was exhausted, feeling seventy-five rather than thirty-five.

Her phone pinged on her desk. Come for a drink at mine?

She smiled. Caitlin never gave up, assuming that now Jack had gone and Hannah was single too, together they would paint the small town if not red, then a subtle shade of brick.

Just one! she typed back, and began smoothing her long dark hair back into a neat chignon at the nape of her neck.

‘Hannah?’

She turned around. The new Head was loitering in the doorway, his sharply tailored suit at odds with the scruffy Portakabin.

‘Hi, Daniel. Did you want me for something?’

‘If you’re not about to . . .’

‘Leave?’ She sighed and dropped her bag back onto her desk, forcing a smile. ‘No.’

She watched him glance around, taking in the maths challenge charts, the photos of her class in anoraks on rainy beaches, and realised it was probably the first time he had been inside her classroom in the five months since he had taken over from Mrs Perry-Likes-a-Sherry. Daniel Morton’s Oxbridge master’s and career at the Ministry of Education had seen him helicoptered in to Primrose Park after its latest crushing Ofsted report, even if his wife was none too happy about placing their children in the second-worst primary school in the district.

‘I’m not going on the residential trip again this year, if that’s what you want,’ she said, mock-frowning at him.

‘No, no. I just wondered if I could have a look at a couple of pieces of work. I had an email from a parent today, following up on last night.’

‘Freddie’s father, by any chance?’ The Wilsons’ appointment had, as usual, been the last of the evening, and as usual had been the one that ran on for over half an hour.

‘Well, yes. He’s concerned that Freddie’s not making progress.’

‘Freddie’s a sweetie – just not a high achiever academically.’

‘And it’s our job to help him reach his potential.’

‘Daniel, he reaches his potential every day. Look,’ she said, waving towards a beautiful re-creation of Van Gogh’s sunflowers pinned to the wall. ‘He’s not behind, he’s just not top of the class. Anyway, he already comes to my lunchtime top-up classes. And I give him reading lists. If Mr Wilson helped Freddie with his homework, instead of emailing complaints, maybe he’d realise.’ She heard the frustration in her own voice, and softened her expression. Daniel was only doing his job. ‘Let me get his work for you,’ she said, pulling out Freddie’s drawer and handing it over.

‘Thanks. And you’ll take a look at that report over the weekend?’

Hannah glanced towards the spiral-bound volume hidden beneath thirty science workbooks on her desk: Critical Practice and Engagement of Pyramid-Fed Education Policy, the report that had justified six months of Daniel Morton’s Whitehall career. ‘Yes, of course. It’s in my bag,’ she said, ushering him out and closing the door behind him.

Caitlin was sitting in the overgrown pocket-handkerchief garden of her little terraced house, a bottle of white wine and two glasses on the table as she checked her son’s hair while he sat on her knee. Hannah realised that she and Caitlin had been Harry’s age when they first met at school.

‘Curse of the reception class strikes again?’ she said.

‘I swear there’s been one week all year when he’s been clear. Here, you have him while I pour this.’

Harry wriggled free, throwing his arms around Hannah. She hugged him back, the kick of love she felt for this little boy stronger than the pain she couldn’t eliminate when she looked at his sweet, chubby face that reminded her so much of her brother Sam. It would get easier as Harry grew older, she hoped, as he became less like the little boy who would remain a toddler for ever. ‘Steady on, big fella!’ she laughed, placing her hands on his shoulders. ‘That’s a fine look you’re sporting.’

‘Amelia let me borrow it.’

‘I wish I had a best friend who lent me their Elsa dress,’ Hannah said. ‘It looks fab over your football shirt.’ She looked him up and down. ‘I’m sure you’ve grown in a week, young man.’

‘Don’t,’ Caitlin said. ‘New trousers, new shoes, new PE kit . . . I need to stop feeding him.’

‘Shame,’ Hannah said. ‘He won’t be wanting these, then?’ She pulled out of her bicycle pannier a small tin of chocolate-marbled madeleines and gave them to Caitlin, who frowned in a dot-to-dot of freckles as Harry went to grab them from her. ‘Home-made doesn’t count as unhealthy, does it?’ Hannah said.

‘It does when it’s come out of your kitchen.’ Caitlin waved towards Hannah’s tall, slim figure. ‘I mean, how do you manage to look like that? If I so much as touched one of those things, I’d look like a muffin.’

Hannah knew she’d been blessed with inheriting her grandmother’s ability to eat without a single calorie touching the sides, rather than her mother’s classic English eat-it-today-wear-it-tomorrow shape. She also knew that over the last year she hadn’t eaten as well as she ought to have, and was verging on thin rather than slim. She often found herself skipping lunch and making a supper of toast or microwave meals instead of the gourmet fare she and Jack had always enjoyed preparing together. Why spend two hours making something that might as well have been sawdust to her dormant taste buds now he was no longer there to share it with her?

‘Whereas you, Ms Monochrome,’ Caitlin went on, ‘can end a week of teaching kids and still look like you’ve walked out of a Paris boutique.’

Hannah glanced down at her slim black cigarette trousers and matching pumps, the crisp white shirt with pleated bib and turn-up cuffs snapped up in a Notting Hill charity shop. Hunting down bargains was one of her great pleasures, even if she had never managed to persuade Jack of the thrill of the chase, leaving him instead happily emptying bookshop shelves. She wondered why they had carried on the charade of hiding piles of clothes and books from one another, but it had become something of a joke in the end.

‘Why do you need more clothes?’ he would ask, baffled. ‘You’ll never get time to wear them all.’

‘And you’ll get time to read everything you buy?’ she’d laugh. ‘I’ll get rid of one piece of clothing every time you finish a book.’

And so their clothes rails and bookshelves continued to groan. Even a year after Jack had left, Hannah still happened upon beautiful coffee-table travel books, travelogues and weighty biographies hidden in the wardrobe or under the bed, and they broke her heart all over again.

It was the little differences between them that had defined their compatibility for fifteen years: her love of clothes and his love of his one favourite sweater, despite the treasures Hannah brought back from her charity-shop trawls for him; her obsessive tidiness and his scattiness; he whose family owned a large portion of Suffolk, and she whose values had been steered by her mother’s frugality and her father’s Guardian subscription, epitomised by the leaky, unkempt cottage Hannah had grown up in. Despite his background, Jack Armstrong was the most unmaterialistic person Hannah had ever met: a mystery to his family as he eschewed a lucrative engineering career in the oil industry in favour of short-term contracts with a global non-profit organisation that worked to ensure clean water supplies in remote communities. They despaired at the son who refused the car they bought him for his twenty-first birthday, demanding they give the money to charity instead; couldn’t understand why he and Hannah, in their mid thirties, had still not allowed them to throw a wedding party to which they could invite the whole county, or given them the grandchildren for whom trust funds were already in place. Jack and Hannah both believed there were enough children in the world, however, and had chosen careers in which they could make a difference. Their shared values were beyond any price.

Above all of this, there had been a powerful chemistry and easy friendship between them, more seductive than anything Hannah had ever known in her life, even if sometimes they locked horns and fought until exhaustion or desire overwhelmed them. And besides, once Jack Armstrong set his charmed, stubborn heart on something, he generally got it.

‘Anyway, you can talk,’ Hannah said now, looking at her friend. Caitlin’s copper curls and paint-spattered leaf-green tunic were an exercise in post-modern pre-Raphaelite glory.

‘Despite the cake smears?’ Caitlin said, wiping off the remains of the madeleine that Harry had rubbed on her. ‘So, how was your week?’

‘Which bit do you want to hear? The parents’ evening that turned into parents’ night? Going round to Dad’s at midnight on Wednesday because he wouldn’t answer the phone all evening and I was worried sick?’

‘Maybe he’d just fallen asleep?’

‘Dad always answers: he knows I only worry if he doesn’t. You’d have been the same, wouldn’t you?’

Caitlin hesitated. ‘Perhaps. Although . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well, perhaps you over-worry.’

‘Cait, he’s just not coping. I mean, the state of the place.’

Caitlin laughed. ‘He’s a man living on his own, Hannah. What do you expect? If you’re that concerned, why not get someone in to help?’

‘It wouldn’t work. He doesn’t like anyone else in the house. And he’s getting quite difficult.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t like being fussed over?’

‘I don’t fuss over him!’ Hannah said indignantly. ‘I just help him out.’

‘I know. And that’s amazing.’ Caitlin narrowed her eyes at her. ‘As long as it’s Hugh you’re doing it for.’

‘Who else would I be doing it for?’

They’d had this argument only recently, since Caitlin had come out of a course of therapy and now fancied herself an expert.

‘It’s just that now your mum has gone . . .’

As though Hannah needed reminding of the day eighteen months ago when Lorna had finally given up, the years of care Hannah had given her not enough to fight off the illness that had fed on her broken soul.

‘. . . and it’s a year since Jack went . . .’

‘Thanks for the reminder.’

‘. . . you’ve got this gap in your life.’

‘Cait, please.’ She leaned back and pressed her hands over her eyes, groaning quietly.

‘You should be filling it with things for yourself, not just work and daughterly duties. You gave up so much to move back here and look after Lorna. As did Jack: commuting into London every day so that he could be here with you. You can’t keep putting this on yourself.’

Hannah turned to Harry, busy shooting lined-up Playmobil figures with a twig machine gun. ‘Tell your mother to mind her own business,’ she called across to him.

‘Auntie Hannah says mind your own business,’ he parroted.

‘Should he be doing that?’ Hannah asked.

‘Probably not. But does it make it better that he’s wearing a dress?’ Caitlin reached for the bottle and held it out to Hannah. ‘Top-up before we’re court-martialled?’

‘Just a small one.’

‘Anyway, what are your weekend plans?’

‘Cutting the grass and shopping for Dad,’ Hannah said warily. ‘Reports, research for the end-of-term reading challenge . . .’

Caitlin laughed. ‘Where’s the girl who didn’t sleep for seventy-two hours at Glasto and got mistaken for Alexa Chung every five minutes?’

‘She’s still recovering,’ Hannah said defensively.

‘Five years later?’

‘I was very tired.’

‘Well, you’re not too tired to come out tomorrow night. There’s a band on at the Crown. Come on, Hannah, when did you last go out?’

‘I’m out now, aren’t I?’

‘My garden does not count as out. You and Jack used to do loads. We could never keep up with you – city breaks, festivals, trekking trips . . . Your life was full of colour, and now look at you: you even dress in black and white. You need to let your hair down. Literally – I mean, what is it with the scraped-back look?’

‘It’s called a chignon, actually. And it’s easier when I’m working.’ Hannah instinctively touched her hair, irritated at Caitlin’s attack on what she thought of as practical chic. ‘Anyway, that was before Mum got ill again. Things are different now.’

‘Yes, they are. Hugh is fine, and you can’t help Lorna now. I know how much you did to look after her, but it could never change what happened. You’ll never bring Sam or your mum back just by putting your own life on hold.’ She hesitated. ‘Or Jack.’

Hannah shot a look at her. ‘Jack’s gone, Cait. I’ve had to accept it, so why can’t you?’

Caitlin held her hands up. ‘I know. I just miss my friend: you’ve lost your spark since he left. You guys were for life, even if you drove each other mad sometimes.’

Hannah sighed. Caitlin had no idea how difficult things had become with Jack in those last months: how he was pressuring her to get over Lorna’s death, refusing to see how much it had affected her. She’d felt suffocated, cornered. ‘You don’t know what it was like, Cait.’

‘I know, but from where I stood, you just needed to talk to each other. Properly. Like you and I talk. I mean, did he even really know what happened with Sam? How could he ever understand how you felt after Lorna died if you didn’t tell him?’

But talking was not what Hannah did: from a family who bottled up their emotions, she was not going to remove the cork that easily, however many times Jack had given up in frustration. ‘You’re just like your bloody father,’ he had said more than once, pushed to the edges of the temper he rarely lost.

‘He wouldn’t have got it,’ she said.

Caitlin frowned. ‘You’re not being fair. Jack really loved you. He’d have understood, if you’d only given him a chance.’ She squeezed Hannah’s hand. ‘But if it really is over, you have to build your life up again. Get out and wear some of those gorgeous clothes of yours.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Hey, we could do something different: go away for a couple of days. London, Paris . . . find the best charity shops . . .’

There was no way Caitlin, the classic struggling artist, could afford more than a trip to the supermarket, but Hannah was grateful for the thought. Anyway, what if something happened to Hugh while she was away? The two of them were all that was left of their little family.

‘I’ll see. Maybe when term’s over, or if Dad perks up.’ She felt tears of self-pity welling, and picked up her glass, swallowing them down with a large mouthful of wine.

‘Then let’s have a night out. And if it gets too much, we’ll go back to yours and drink cocoa. I promise. Pick you up at seven tomorrow?’

‘Maybe.’ Hannah emptied her glass and stood up, exhausted by the exposing conversation. ‘I’d better get going. It’s going to rain any minute.’

Caitlin stood and hugged her warmly. ‘Please try to leave it all behind,’ she said gently. ‘No one can carry around this much baggage and stay sane. You’re the best, Hannah.’

Harry pushed between them to present Hannah with a headless plush dinosaur, clouds of stuffing oozing from its neck. ‘For you,’ he said. ‘But you can only have it for three days. Then you have to give it back.’

She looked at it, worn thin through years of love, and quickly put it in her handbag, for fear of emotion. It was just a silly toy; when would these little triggers ever stop catching her out?

She kissed Caitlin on both cheeks, a habit inherited from her French grandmother, and wheeled her bike out onto the road.

As soon as she was out of sight of the house, she stopped, breathing deeply. It was so much easier to keep going, head down, day to day, without being reminded of Jack. They were over. She could live without him. Wasn’t that what she was doing every day?

Until she heard his name.

And then she had no idea how she could live without him.

The downpour of sweet, summer-warm rain had seen off the gaggles of secondary-school kids and early-evening dog walkers. Hannah cycled across the park unimpeded, shrugging herself deeper inside the trench coat designed for a sunny Rive Gauche rather than a damp municipal park.

Why would anyone sit out in this weather? she wondered, noticing a figure ahead of her. She braked as she came level with the bench, seeing it was a child, his clothing soaked through. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, and he looked up at her. ‘Freddie? I thought you were going to Liam’s.’

His face crumpled. ‘I was. I did. But then Lucas started being a pain.’

Liam’s brother Lucas was two years older, and secondary-school-hardened. He’d been king of the Primrose Park playground while he was there, and now took delight in picking on younger kids.

‘Does Liam’s mum know you left?’ Hannah doubted Mrs Johnson would notice one mouth fewer at the dinner table: Liam’s home life was happy but chaotically fluid.

‘I told her I was going home.’

‘Don’t you live the other side of town?’

He shrugged. ‘I said I was being picked up at the end of the road.’

‘So where do your parents think you are?’

He hesitated, then wiped his face with the sleeve of his sodden school sweatshirt. ‘Liam’s. For a sleepover. I didn’t want them to be cross because I’d left.’

‘Well, you can’t stay here. We’ll have to call them. Where’s your phone?’

‘I lost it. Must have fallen out of my bag or something.’

Hannah sighed. Of course it had. She scrabbled around in her handbag. ‘Well, let’s call them on mine and sort out how we’re going to get you home. You know their numbers? No? OK, don’t worry.’ She’d just have to call the Head’s secretary.

‘Damn.’

He looked up. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My phone’s dead.’ She watched the waves of rain lashing the empty park. ‘You’d better come back to mine. We’ll use my landline,’ she said reluctantly. Many was the time she’d stayed late at school with a little soul whose parents had forgotten to collect them, but this was different. The emergency protocol was drummed into them, but she’d never had to take a child into her own home in order to locate the parents. Let alone the Wilsons’ child. ‘Come on,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘It’s only around the corner. We’ll have you back home before you know it.’

He hesitated, then pulled himself off the wet bench and fell into step beside the bicycle.

‘You’ve got a cool house,’ he said as he settled himself onto the scuffed Moroccan leather sofa, glancing around at the whitewashed walls and polished floorboards, the scant yet carefully chosen mid-century furniture, Jack’s framed photographs of their travels: Nepalese children, Bangkok markets and Andean landscapes. ‘Did you take those pictures?’

‘No, my . . . I mean, an old friend did. Here, dry your hair with this towel while I ring around.’

As he flicked through the channels, she saw her house through fresh eyes. It was cool, she supposed: nothing breakable and nothing left where it could be knocked over – Jack had always had the spatial awareness of an excited Labrador.

Miles Wilson could have pretended to be a little more grateful for Hannah’s intervention, when she eventually located him, but at least Freddie would be able to go home now. ‘They’ll be about twenty minutes,’ she told him. ‘Can I get you anything to eat?’ she asked, noticing his rumbling stomach.

Ten minutes later, Freddie had demolished a four-egg omelette and was tucking into his third chocolate madeleine. ‘You’re a really good cook, miss,’ he said.

‘Ah, well, my French grandmother taught me.’ Hannah smiled, remembering the happy hours she and Gigi had spent together in the kitchen of her grandparents’ house.

‘Hannah, how do you manage to make so much mess!’ Gigi used to laugh as she dabbed flour from young Hannah’s cheeks with a tea towel.

‘But all great chefs make a mess, Grand-mère,’ she would say, shrieking with laughter as she hugged Gigi, covering her grandmother’s immaculate twinset and pencil skirt with the debris of whatever pastry or tart they had been making together.

‘What, frogs’ legs and stuff?’ Freddie said, bringing her back into the moment.

She saw the disgust on his face and laughed. ‘Only if my grandfather didn’t behave.’

The low thrum of an expensive engine gradually crescendoed along the road outside. ‘That’ll be them,’ Hannah said. ‘Let’s get your stuff together.’ She stood, waiting for Freddie to follow suit, but he shrank deeper into the sofa.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ he said quietly.

‘Don’t be silly. Why ever not?’

He began chewing his lower lip.

‘Freddie?’ She heard footsteps on the pa