The Shadow Child

by Judith Lennox

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Women's Fiction; Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

July 1914, the eve of the First World War, and fourteen-year-old Alix Gregory is holidaying in France with the wealthy Lanchbury family. She is looking after two-year-old Charlie Lanchbury when he disappears during a family picnic and is never seen again. Once a happy, carefree girl, Alix is blamed for the tragedy and cannot escape from the resulting disintegration of the family. The war ends and Alix tries to pick up the threads of her life. Through her marriage and the birth of her son, Rory, she finds happiness, and through her meeting with the brothers Derry and Jonathan Fox, she finds love. Yet, living in her ancient and beautiful home, Owlscote, she is haunted by the loss of her baby cousin. As the years pass, and as the world descends into the horrors of war once more, the question remains: will Charlie Lanchbury ever be found?

Release date: May 7, 2015

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 557

Sample

There were six tiny buttons on each of his boots. When she bent to fasten them, Charlie flung his arms round her head and cried, ‘Allie, Allie, Allie!’ and beat her with his fists. Charlie Lanchbury was two years old, and plump and adorable. Alix swung him up in her arms and covered his face with kisses.

She looked out of the window, down to the courtyard of the chateau, where Uncle Charles was handing Aunt Marie into the Daimler. Alix could see her three young cousins, Ella, May and Daisy, all wearing matching white muslin dresses tied with pink sashes. It was May’s, the middle Lanchbury sister’s, ninth birthday. The entire Lanchbury family – Uncle Charles and Aunt Marie, the four children, their Boncourt grandparents, and Alix herself – were to go on a picnic.

‘Stand still, Charlie.’ His red-gold curls were tickling her chin, making her giggle. She tried to straighten the rumpled tips of his lace collar, but he wriggled out of her grasp and tottered around the room, shouting, ‘’Ord! ’Ord!’

The afternoon sun gleamed through the window panes, marking bright squares on the polished wooden floor. When Alix picked up her sketchbook, a leaf of paper floated to the floor. It was a drawing of her father and mother standing on a quayside, huge handkerchieves pressed against their faces, their oversized tears forming a comical puddle round their feet. The sketch was entitled, ‘Mr and Mrs Gregory, seeing their daughter Alix off on her travels.’ It was signed AJG, her father’s initials.

Alix had hardly felt homesick during the entire two months of her holiday in France: she had been too busy, and too entranced by the difference of it all. It was her first holiday with her Lanchbury cousins; at fourteen years old it was her first holiday abroad. Yet, looking at the cartoon, she felt a sudden pang.

Crawling around the room on her hands and knees, she peered beneath tables and chairs.

‘Help me find your sword, Charlie, or we’ll be late.’

She discovered the toy sword hidden inside a box of wooden bricks. Charlie jumped up and down with excitement, and toddled across the room to her. ‘’Ord,’ he said, and beamed, a wide smile patched with tiny pearly teeth.

‘Sword,’ Alix corrected him gently, and, pulling the ribbon from her own dark, curling hair, she tied it round the middle of his velvet-covered stomach, and fixed the small wooden sword inside. He held out his hands to her, and she carried him to the window. All around them, as far as the eye could see, the fields of northern France shimmered in the midday heat. Alix hugged Charlie’s small, warm body against her own. Then she grabbed her hat and ran outside into the sun.

In the motor-car, she kept her sketchbook and pencil in the pocket of her dress. The book was almost full, only a few empty pages left. And all sensible drawings, nothing like the pictures that had got her into such trouble at school. Her stomach still lurched at the memory of being summoned to Miss Humphreys’s study and seeing, spread out on the headmistress’s desk, her cartoons of the members of staff at Ashfield House. Miss Turton, the hockey mistress, red-faced and stout-calved; Miss Bright (history) peering over her pince-nez. Her teachers’ most prominent characteristics magnified and mocked. Her drawings, scribbled in the margins of rough books or on the pages of autograph books, made the other girls laugh; they traded lemon drops and bull’s-eyes in exchange for a cartoon. Miss Humphreys, though, had not laughed. Retribution had been swift and unrelenting. Alix had not even been allowed to say goodbye to her friends.

The most awful thing – and Alix, no longer noticing the pale gold of the passing French countryside, gave a small sigh – the most awful thing had been the bewilderment and disappointment on her parents’ faces when they had arrived to take her away from school. She had hated herself for letting them down. The second most awful thing had been her realization that she herself must have left the sketchbook in the school cloakroom. Added to the mislaid galoshes, dancing tunics and fountain pens that had haunted her brief career at Ashfield House was that final, self-incriminating carelessness.

A few weeks after her ignoble exit from school, Alix’s mother had received Uncle Charles’s letter. ‘So kind of Charles and Marie,’ Beatrice Gregory had said. ‘They’ve offered to take you to France with them. They take the four children there each summer to stay with Marie’s family.’ Mrs Gregory had frowned. ‘I’m not sure … fourteen is so young … and we really should look for another school. But Nanny Barnes is unwell, you see, so she can’t go.’ Some of the strands of grey hair that escaped incessantly from Mrs Gregory’s coiffure fell over her creased brow. ‘Marie asks it as a favour. You would be expected to help with your little cousins, of course, Alix. I’m not sure …’

The motor-car driven by Robert, the Boncourts’ stable-boy, jolted on the cobbled road. Charlie wriggled on Alix’s lap as she remembered the promises she had made to her mother. I’ll be as good as gold, I’ll take care of all my belongings, and I’ll never argue or complain. She would have promised anything to be permitted the adventure of travelling to France.

She had kept her promises, by and large. She had only once stuck out her tongue at Ella, when Ella, inspecting the contents of her suitcase, had said, ‘Cotton gloves, Cousin Alix! We always have kid or lace. Mama says that only governesses and ladies’ maids wear cotton gloves.’ And she had only lost her temper once, when she had overheard Aunt Marie whisper to Mme Boncourt, ‘Alix’s father is a schoolteacher. Beatrice Lanchbury married beneath her – frightened that she would remain an old maid, I suppose.’

Now the Boncourts’ chateau and its surrounding fields were far behind them. The level plains of Picardy were sheened with ripening corn and dotted with poplars. Heat gathered in the motor-car’s open-sided cab.

Five-year-old Daisy whined, ‘Are we there yet?’

‘Course not, silly,’ said Ella.

‘I’m hungry.’ Daisy’s face crumpled.

‘There’ll be plenty of nice food at the picnic, dear,’ said Mme Boncourt comfortingly. ‘Though I always think French food is so rich for little tummies. Such a pity Nanny couldn’t come. Nanny made such lovely rice puddings and egg custards, didn’t she?’ Mme Boncourt, who was kind and vague and fat, beamed at Alix. ‘You are enjoying your little holiday, aren’t you, Alix dear?’

Alix thought of the Channel crossing and the golden sands of Le Touquet, where they had stayed for the first three weeks, and the sleepy French villages, and the verges embroidered with scarlet poppies and blue chicory. And she pictured the splendour of the Lanchburys’ lives – Aunt Marie’s exquisite silk gowns, and the servants who waited on their every need. And the motor-car, of course. Until last month she had never travelled in a motor-car.

‘It’s been wonderful,’ she said vehemently. She hugged Charlie closer to her, breathing in the clean, soapy scent of his skin, kissing the top of his head.

Alix drew the picnic table, and the servants setting it out. She began to draw Robert and the nursemaid Louise, who were half hidden beneath the trees, but Charlie threw himself onto her lap, seizing her pencil and jabbing at her sketchbook.

‘’Nake.’

‘Snake? Charlie wants to draw a snake?’ Alix guided the pencil, clutched in his chubby fist. Sinuous curves crawled over the paper.

‘’Nake,’ he said again, and pointed at the trees. ‘Over dere.’

‘You saw a snake? Over there?’ Alix stood up, dusting fragments of dried grass from her skirt. ‘Let’s go and see.’ She held out her hand to him.

Pink and white flickered among the green and black of the forest as May and Daisy, ahead of them, darted through the trees. The conversation of the adults, sitting in the shade, retreated into the distance, the timbre of their voices curiously flattened, as if the tall trees or the summer heat itself smothered their words.

‘… could visit dear Amelie in Paris.’ Mme Boncourt’s voice.

‘But the harvest …’ M. Boncourt, unlike his wife, spoke in French.

‘Of course, Felix. I had forgotten. Of course we must wait for the harvest.’

‘The Kaiser’s army may not do so.’ Mr Lanchbury paused in his pacing of the boundaries.

‘Really, Charles.’ Mme Boncourt gave a little laugh. ‘I don’t think things have reached quite that pass.’

‘Of course you don’t. I have always thought, belle-mère, that you make optimism into an art form.’

Charlie tugged Alix’s hand, pulling her deeper into the woods. Distantly, Uncle Charles added, ‘I should like to have left tomorrow. We must return to England early in view of the …’ and then he was out of earshot, and Charlie was whispering, ‘’Nake, Allie, ’nake.’

She shivered when she saw the coiled shape in the dried leaves. Then, looking again, she laughed and said, ‘It’s only an old snakeskin, Charlie. See, there’s nothing there.’

Squatting beside her, he poked the sloughed-off skin with the tip of his sword, overturning it. Gently, Alix pulled him away. ‘Leave it, Charlie, leave it alone. Let’s find your sisters, shall we?’

He padded ahead of her through the trees. We must return to England early, Uncle Charles had said. Suddenly, Alix longed to be home again, showing her father her sketchbook, telling her mother about the vast, airy rooms of the Boncourts’ chateau, crammed with gilt and velvet furniture, and describing to her Aunt Marie’s gowns, with their froth of lace and baby ribbon that whispered as she walked. Alix knew that if she had been walking through these woods with her father he would have told her the names of the tiny white flowers that quivered in the undergrowth, and he would have recognized the song of the bird that perched in the highest branches of the trees. He would have known which snake had sloughed off the skin that had alarmed Charlie, and he would have shown Alix how to draw a picnic table whose legs appeared to be made of wood, and not rubber.

The only horrible part about going home would be leaving Charlie. Charlie had been Alix’s principal charge during her eight weeks in France. He had attached himself to her on her very first day with the Lanchburys, kneeling beside her on a bench on the deck of the steamer, watching the boat’s white wake stain the steel-grey waves. In the hotel at Le Touquet Charlie had refused to sleep unless Alix tucked him in; on the long train journey to Amiens he had sat still only when Alix had hugged him on her lap and told him stories. She loved him with a fierce, unexpected passion; she had never cared much for dolls, and she had thought, somehow, to find her two-and-a-half-year-old cousin equally dull. But she had discovered that it was a delight just to hold him, to feel his weight in her arms, and to press his fine, silky curls against her face when she bent to kiss him.

After the picnic (ham and jellied chicken, apple tarts and a vast, pink birthday cake), Alix helped the girls make daisy chains. Ella, May and Daisy lay on the grass, pressing their thumbnails into the green, juicy stalks. Charlie played around his mother’s skirts, poking with a plump, dirty finger at the ladybird that climbed laboriously from blade of grass to clover leaf.

Mme Boncourt held out a hand so that her husband could help her from her chair. ‘I must go home, Marie dear. It’s so hot, and I’m feeling quite faint. I’ll travel in the dogcart with the servants. I’ll not spoil your day.’

‘Maman—’

‘Hush, Marie. I prefer to travel in the dogcart. Motor-cars are such nasty, dirty things.’

The servants were arranging the hampers and rugs in the dogcarts. Uncle Charles, tossing Ella’s ball smoothly from one hand to another, said lazily, ‘If you are to go home now, belle-mère, then be sure to take that wretched nursery-maid with you. She does nothing but flirt with the stable-boy.’

‘Charles. Little pitchers—’

‘Alix will look after Charlie, won’t you, Alix? We’ll have a game of cricket. Find some sticks, Ella, for stumps.’

‘It’s past their bedtime …’ A vague gesture of a white-gloved wrist. ‘We should go home, Charles.’

‘Nonsense, Marie. On such a glorious evening?’ Uncle Charles jammed the sticks that Ella had found into the grass. ‘Alix, Daisy and myself in one team. Ella, May and Charlie in the other. May shall bat first because it’s her birthday.’

The dogcarts carrying the servants and the Boncourts and a sulky Louise disappeared down the lane. The cartwheels sent up clouds of dust. Uncle Charles bowled, and May lashed out with the bat. The ball soared into the undergrowth, and Charlie clapped his fat hands together, and Ella shouted, ‘Run, May, run!’

Uncle Charles bowled again and again. The little girls’ feet pattered on the hard ground. The sun slid towards the treetops, a burning globe. The ball, hurtling down from an overbright sky, slipped between Alix’s palms.

‘Butterfingers,’ said Uncle Charles sharply.

The click of ball against bat marked the passing moments. The trees became black silhouettes against a darkening sky. Charlie, supposedly fielding, had crept back to his mother and was sucking his thumb. Every now and then Aunt Marie reached down and silently pushed his hand away from his face, but after she had sat upright again the thumb slid back into his mouth. Soon, Alix thought, Uncle Charles would notice that Daisy had become red-faced and tearful, that Ella’s sullenness had turned to aggression, and that even May’s sunny disposition had begun to falter. Yet the ball continued to rise up into the air, and Uncle Charles continued to harangue them to run faster, try harder.

The last wicket fell. ‘Bowled,’ said Uncle Charles, smacking his hands together. ‘My team’s game, I think.’

Dark shadows licked the grass. The Lanchburys gathered up bat and ball and discarded hats and gloves. Daisy’s pink sash trailed greyly in the dust, and Charlie, when his mother pulled him to his feet, quivered with weariness. Walking back to the motor-cars, Ella and May argued.

‘It’s my turn to go with Papa,’ hissed Ella.

May showed her teeth. ‘It’s my birthday. Papa said.’

In the back seat of the Boncourts’ car, Alix cradled Charlie in her lap while Daisy huddled against her. The wheels jolted on the baked earth. Charlie’s lids drooped slowly over his cornflower-blue irises. A languor had seized them all.

Fields and streams drifted by. Oil-lamps gleamed in cottage windows, and the last rays of the sun lit with gold the flowers in a roadside shrine. I shall remember this evening for the rest of my life, thought Alix. I shall remember the scent of the dust and the grass, and the way the poppies on the verge bend and sway as the motor-car passes, and I shall remember the way Charlie smiles as he dreams.

Reaching a village, they stopped. Faces flickered in the dim light, staring curiously into the car. Charlie sat up, blinking. Ahead of them, the Daimler had also come to a halt.

Aunt Marie approached the car. ‘Papa says that you had all better get out. The motor-car …’ She drew away, her white glove slipping from the rim of the door, one hand to her face, fingertips fluttering against her veiled mouth.

They clustered together on the cobbles. May cocked her head to one side. ‘I can hear music,’ she whispered. There was the distant sound of fiddles and drums. ‘Papa, I can hear music.’ She ran to the corner of the street, peering into the darkness.

‘The radiator’s overheated,’ said Mr Lanchbury. ‘We must wait for it to cool down.’

‘Papa, there’s a fair …’

Not quite in rhythm with the music, Uncle Charles tapped the rim of his straw boater against his thigh. ‘A fair, you say? We may as well go and see.’

‘Papa!’ May clapped her hands together.

‘Charles … it’s so late … and a little country fair …’

‘You may remain in the motor-car if you wish, Marie.’ Charles Lanchbury began to stride down the narrow alleyway.

The journey from the picnic glade seemed to have revived them. May skipped, and even Ella smiled. Reluctantly, Marie Lanchbury followed after them, Charlie scampering beside her.

The street debouched into a small square. In the centre of the square a bonfire burned, illuminating both the market stalls and the people gathered beside them. Dancers pirouetted around the bonfire and in one corner of the square a carousel was turning. May, clutching one of Alix’s hands, ducked through the press of bodies, heading towards the dancers. Daisy’s small paw gripped Alix’s other hand. Looking back, Alix saw Charlie, half hidden by his mother’s silk skirts, hypnotized by a juggler’s soaring coloured hoops.

‘Beautiful,’ said May. The word was a sigh of delight. Her rapt gaze focused on the gypsy dancers.

‘Allie, Allie, Allie!’ Charlie cannoned into her knees, almost knocking her over. Alix scooped him up in her arms.

Ella, running after him, said, ‘He wants you to see the monkeys.’

‘Monkeys?’

‘There’s a man with two little monkeys. You hold the monkey and he plays a tune, and you give him some money.’ Ella, head down, forced a path across the square.

The monkeys’ tiny, sad faces peered out from beneath knitted bonnets. May and Ella cradled them like babies as the hurdy-gurdy turned, a melancholy drone. Charlie stroked a wrinkled paw with his own plump finger. Alix handed a few coins to their owner, who slid them into a greasy leather purse.

Next to the organ grinder was a sweet stall. Charlie tugged Alix’s hand, begging for a lollipop, but she shook her head.

‘I’ve no money left, Charlie. There’s your mama – run and ask her.’

On the stone steps in front of the mairie, Alix sat down and took out her sketchbook. Fragments of the Lanchburys’ conversation drifted over the shouting and laughter of the crowd and the jingle of tambourines.

‘… must not touch my gown with such sticky fingers, Charlie. I said …’

‘It’s not fair. She has more than me. And she held the prettiest monkey.’

‘… fail to see why we must mingle with such people. It’s not like you, Charles. I realize that you wish to …’

‘I want to be a ballerina. When I grow up I’m going to be a ballerina.’

Alix wanted to be an artist when she grew up. She had confided her ambition to no-one yet, knowing that she must choose the right moment to persuade her parents to let her go to art school in London.

When her sketchbook was full she stood up. Every page was crammed with drawings. Looking around, Alix realized that she could no longer see the Lanchburys. As the night closed in, the fair had become insubstantial, made of shadows. It had started to rain, a fine drizzle that gave the cobbles a gleaming, oily sheen. Uncoiling inside her was the fear that the Lanchburys had forgotten her, that they had driven back to the chateau without her. Alix tried to recall where they had left the motor-cars. Down that side street, surely … or had it been along that alleyway? She began to run. The rain stung her eyes. Then a hand grabbed her wrist and she spun round. An old woman jabbed at the lines of her palm with a calloused fingertip. Alix heard a gabble of words, but could not in her panic recall any French.

‘She wants to read your palm, Cousin Alix. She’s a fortune-teller.’

‘Ella.’ Alix felt dizzy with relief. ‘Where were you? I was afraid I was lost.’

‘The others are going back to the motor-cars. Papa sent me to fetch you. He’s very cross. He says that it’s late and you must hurry.’ Ella glared at the old woman. ‘Allez vous en, won’t you? Pas de l’argent. Allez vous en.’

The rain became heavier. Alix could see Uncle Charles’s hat, bobbing above the crowd, drops of rain drumming against the brim. Aunt Marie was surrounded by villagers, a flicker of ghostly-pale silk. Alix’s thin cotton dress clung damply to her shoulders, and for the first time that day she felt chilled. The villagers surged around the motor-cars, curious fingers reaching out to touch them. May and Ella’s shrill cries soared above the chatter and laughter.

‘’S not fair! It’s my birthday!’

‘I’m the eldest! I should go in Papa’s motor-car!’

‘Papa said—’ A scream. ‘You pinched me! Cousin Alix – Ella pinched me!’

‘Beastly little girl—’

A louder howl. ‘She stamped on my foot! Ow, ow!’

‘Good God, you two are not fit to leave the nursery.’ Uncle Charles’s cold voice cut through the rain. ‘As for you’ – he turned sharply to Alix – ‘don’t just stand there. See to them.’

‘Go with your mama, Ella,’ said Alix quickly. ‘May can come with us.’ Ella, triumphant, threaded through the crowds towards the Daimler.

Alix steered May towards the Boncourts’ car. May beat at her with her fists. ‘Not fair!’ she howled. ‘’S my birthday!’ Rain plastered May’s hair to her scalp, and her pale blue eyes were furious.

‘Oh, May!’ Alix wiped the tears from the little girl’s eyes. ‘We’ll have a nice time,’ she coaxed. ‘We’ll play I Spy.’

May flung herself face down on the back seat, threw her hands over her ears, and sobbed. Alix peered around the inside of the car. No Charlie. Just Robert, in the front seat, smoking a cigarette, his eyes half closed, humming to himself.

Suddenly anxious, Alix touched Robert’s shoulder.

‘Robert, where’s Charlie?’

Robert shrugged. ‘In the Daimler, I expect, mademoiselle.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, climbed out of the car, and turned the starting-handle.

There was the sound of small feet on the cobbles. Alix spun round. Daisy scrambled into the seat beside her. ‘Not going with Ella. Ella’s horrid.’

‘Daisy, where’s Charlie?’

Daisy, her thumb in her mouth, mumbled, ‘With Mama,’ and curled up next to her sister. Back in the driver’s seat, Robert pressed the accelerator, and the engine roared. Rain battered the cobbles; many of the passers-by had begun to run to escape the downpour. Kneeling up, Alix peered through the darkness and the rain. Her fingers touched the door handle. She could not, among the milling crowds, see Charlie. And the Lanchburys’ Daimler was already driving fast out of the village, forcing its way through the throng, its rear window a black, opaque mask.

Robert, too, began to head out of the village. Raindrops pounded against the roof of the car, and May sobbed noisily. Without Charlie, Alix’s arms felt empty. Daisy had slid into the footwell and was already asleep. Alix’s eyes, too, had become heavy. When she closed them, random scenes from the day fluttered behind her lids. The drive through the sunsoaked countryside. Charlie, brandishing his toy sword in the wood. The monkey, with its lost, sad eyes.

May’s tears had died away, replaced by slow, hiccupping breaths. Though Alix would have liked, like Daisy and May, to sleep, she did not seem able to. Though she ached with exhaustion, disjointed images continued to flicker through her mind. Whenever she began to drift off to sleep, something – the cry of a bird, the alteration in pitch of the engine as Robert changed gear – woke her. When the motor-car drew to a halt, she opened her eyes, expecting to see the lit windows of the Boncourts’ chateau. But instead, through the curtain of rain, she caught sight of a railway-engine, wheels and pistons churning, a long line of carriages tagged behind it, heading along the track that crossed the road ahead of them.

Robert spoke. Alix blinked, shaking her head.

‘Soldats,’ he repeated. ‘Soldiers.’ He gestured to the carriages. Through the endless passing windows, she glimpsed the bright reds and blues of the French uniforms.

‘Soon, I am a soldier,’ said Robert proudly. ‘I shall fight for my country. No more driving. No more cleaning stables.’ He threw back his head and laughed.

The train continued on its way, a long black and yellow serpent heading north. Alix could not see the Daimler. The road was empty.

At last, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Parking in the forecourt of the Boncourts’ chateau, Robert had to shake her shoulder to wake her. Sleep sucked at her, trying to claw her back. She glimpsed Charlie’s toy sword, abandoned in the footwell of the car, and picked it up. She saw the Daimler, parked on the gravel. May and Daisy, stumbling with exhaustion, trailed beside her into the chateau. Alix ran upstairs, sword in hand. The nursery was dark, the nightlight unlit. She sensed as soon as she stepped into the room that it was empty, yet still she glanced inside the cot, and saw the plumped-up pillow, the turned-back sheet, and the nightshirt, neatly folded.

For the remainder of the night, for the remainder of her life, the conversation with Aunt Marie echoed inside her head.

Where’s Charlie? I wanted to kiss him good night.

Charlie? Charlie was with you.

No, Aunt Marie. Charlie went … and then the first glimmering of dreadful possibility, and the scratchy sound of her own voice repeating, Charlie went with you. Charlie went with you.

They were in the drawing-room. Aunt Marie had taken off her hat and veil. The gilt mirror reflected the dawning fear in her eyes.

‘Ella was with us.’ Marie Lanchbury pressed a bell. Her hand shook. ‘Only Ella. You are mistaken, surely, Alix.’

When Louise came into the room, Aunt Marie spoke to her. Louise shook her head. ‘I was going to bath the girls, madame.’

‘No, Louise. You must bring them downstairs immediately. And you must fetch Mr Lanchbury.’ Marie Lanchbury’s small, tapering fingers clasped and unclasped the pearl brooch she wore at her throat. ‘In the village … the village with the fair …’

The room filled with people. The three girls, Uncle Charles, the Boncourts. No Charlie. In the blink of an eye, the turn of a head, Alix knew that she must see him, clutching May’s hand, or peering out from behind Grand-père Boncourt’s legs.

Their voices echoed, staccato and disbelieving.

‘Left behind?’

‘The village …’

‘What nonsense. How can he have been left behind?’

‘Where’s Charlie? I want Charlie!’

‘Such a cry-baby, Daisy …’

‘He was in the other motor—’

‘No, Charles, no!’ Marie Lanchbury’s voice rose in a shriek. ‘He was not in the other motor! That’s what I am trying to tell you!’

A silence. Then, ‘Bon Dieu.’ Mme Boncourt sat down heavily.

‘He’s not in the house?’

A whisper. ‘I believe not, Charles.’

‘Who saw him last?’

‘In the village … He liked the bonfire …’

‘Bonfire?’

‘There was a fair, Maman. It was very crowded … dreadful people …’ Marie Lanchbury’s voice jerked and shook. ‘Gypsies, Charles. There were gypsies!’ Her twitching fingers returned to the brooch, ripping it from the fabric. ‘Gypsies steal children, don’t they!’ She broke off, staring at her husband. ‘Charles – Charles – you must go back – you must look for him …’ Her words became incoherent, choked with dry sobs.

‘Charlie was with Alix,’ said Ella. ‘She took him to see the monkeys.’

Where’s Charlie? Charlie was with you. Their faces turned to her, and their eyes focused on her, as they waited for her to speak. The room was silent except for Aunt Marie’s rasping, spasmodic breathing.

Memories entangled. Gripped by a rising panic, Alix could not recall their order. A plump finger stroking a monkey’s wizened hand. A paper cone, and sugar round Charlie’s mouth. Before the monkeys? After? She muttered, struggling to clear her thoughts, ‘I was drawing … I sat down on the steps …’

‘Drawing!’ Uncle Charles took a pace towards her. ‘You were drawing …’

‘But Charlie … where …? Tell us, Alix!’

‘I couldn’t see anyone. I got lost. Ella found me.’ She spoke in short, sharp, frightened gasps. ‘We went back to the motor-car.’ She screwed up her eyes. She must remember. Had she seen Charlie in the crowds, hurrying back through the rain? Had she glimpsed him, a flash of blue and white and copper curls, among the people milling round the cars?

She pressed her clenched fists against her forehead. ‘Ella and May were arguing. Ella went in Uncle Charles’s motor-car. I told May to get into Monsieur Boncourt’s car.’ Suddenly, she looked up at them. ‘Daisy came – yes, that’s it, Daisy told me that Charlie was in Uncle Charles’s car.’

‘Daisy?’ Mr Lanchbury glared at his youngest daughter. His voice was harsh. ‘Daisy? Is that true? Did you tell Alix such a thing? Did you tell her that Charlie was in the Daimler with us?’

Daisy’s thumb was in her mouth. Her eyes were dark and frightened, her hair a tangle of silver. She shook her head.

There was a peculiar sound. A low, unnerving moaning. Aunt Marie’s eyes were wide and staring as she rocked to and fro. Her fingers clawed at her hair, pulling tortured clumps from her neat coiffure.

Alix flinched as Uncle Charles turned towards her. No-one had ever before in her entire life looked at her like that. Such cold loathing.

‘You can’t even admit your carelessness, can you? You try to pass the blame to your little cousin. You promised to look after Charlie. Don’t you remember? You promised to look after him.’ Charles Lanchbury addressed his wife. ‘I shall go back to the village immediately. Charlie must still be there. Don’t worry, Marie – I sha