Is he going to kiss me?

Panic rose inside her. Torn between running for all she was worth and staying, allowing herself that one small experience, she remained stuck ambivalently, desperate for any flash of color in the drabness of her world. That one small gift of a kiss. The parlor maid had talked about kissing all the time, every week a new set of lips. Nell was happy to imagine how it would feel. But now, here, she felt the urge to know it for real.

But what if he took advantage of her? Dragged her into the wood? The parlor maid had talked about that, too. She should get away now.

His eyes looked over her face, to her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, where they lingered a moment too long.

“I have to go,” he said. “I will be in trouble if I am away too long.”

A small step closer.

“Yes, I have to go, too.” She glanced around, feeling the blood flood to her face.

    Then, as if not knowing what to do, he suddenly took a step back, picked up her hand—and then something unimaginable happened.

He lifted her fingers up, and very slowly lowered his mouth onto the back of her hand. His lips were like velvet, pressing with the faintest hint of movement, the lightest perception of moisture. It was as if he were a knight of old, and she a lady. She let out a little laugh at the idea—her a lady?

His large, dark eyes looked up into hers, his lips still on her hand, and her heart began to pound in her chest, her lips parting involuntarily to release a shuddered breath.

Could this really be happening to me? Invisible Nell Brown?

“Goodbye.” He slowly let her hand down, smiling again, a gentle, conspiratorial kind of smile. “You will win with your primo, and then you come back to me for your secondo, my next catch.”

With a dry throat, she determinedly took her hand away, gripping the basket handle. “Thank you, I’ll do that,” she said softly. “Cheerio, then.” And as nonchalantly as she could, she began down the path toward the hall.

As she walked, she heard his voice saying softly “goodbye,” and she turned one more time, watching as he headed off in the opposite direction.

At that moment, he spun around and lifted his hand high in the sky to wave, as if the fields, the sunshine, the day itself, belonged to them.

That they were as free as nature itself.

She waved back, feeling that same jubilation, and as the space between them grew, they both kept looking behind them, a game or a gesture or simply a yearning.

It wasn’t until he was out of sight that she clutched her basket in her arms and she ran. She ran across the fields. She ran through the wood, darting this way and that through the trees. She ran as fast as she could, propelled into a sprint, the energy pounding inside of her with an intensity that she’d never felt before.

Zelda

Zelda’s first week at Audrey’s house was not an unmitigated success. As promised, Zelda had found a man to mend the roof, for which he would charge her a good sum. In order to pay him, she decided to pawn a pearl necklace that Jim Denton had given her, only to find that the pearls were fake.

“Are you sure?” she’d asked the man in the scruffy pawnshop in Middleton.

The man looked at her through his monocle, his one eye enlarged. “I’m afraid so.” Then he added with a little jeer, “Hope you weren’t expecting to marry him.”

Zelda gave a thin smile, took the pearls, and left.

As she strode down the high street, deep inside she felt a thud of annoyance. “Does Jim Denton think he can make a fool out of me?”

Ever since her mother sent her out to clean houses when she was ten, Zelda loathed people making a fool out of her, telling her what to do. Every night she’d come home, exhausted from scrubbing, only to be yelled at to look after her younger siblings, change them and feed them with whatever scraps she’d stolen from the homes she cleaned. She screamed back, of course, only to be slapped back down, threatened with being locked in a cupboard until she held her tongue. Two years later, her mother, with yet another baby on the way, pushed mouthy Zelda out of her house to work as a live-in scullery maid in a high-class London mansion. She was meant to send home a shilling each week.

    She never did.

And she never set eyes on her mother again.

“I’ll never set eyes on Jim Denton, either,” she growled. “Where am I going to get the money from now?” She’d have to beg the roofer to let her pay in installments, as she got paid.

When she arrived back at Willow Lodge, she saw the younger two boys, Ben and Christopher, in the garden and joined them to pick some vegetables for dinner.

“Mum’s gone to the neighbor to borrow their frying oil—we share it because it uses too much oil for one family,” Ben said, yanking a carrot out, dusting it off, and taking a large chomp. “We have to stay here and do the weeding.”

“These are weeds, even though they look like flowers,” Christopher said, twiddling a buttercup between his fingers. “If you put it under your chin, you can see if you like butter.”

“Why don’t you try it on me?” Zelda said, crouching beside him and lifting her chin.

He held it up. “Golly, it says you like butter very much indeed.”

Ben was jumping around beside them. “Do it to me!”

They were so busy that they barely heard the growing sound of the plane in the distance.

It wasn’t until the noise was loud and sudden, the black form appearing over the trees, that Christopher dropped the flower, his face ashen.

“Not another plane,” Ben said, his eyes large and anxious. He looked at Zelda. “Quick, we have to take Christopher into the Anderson shelter. He gets scared.”

Zelda could see that. The boy looked as if he were about to faint, and then suddenly, without warning, he began to cry, hefty, uncontrollable sobs.

Gathering him in her arms, her first thought was sheer and utter annoyance.

    How dare Audrey leave her in this situation!

This, however, was promptly overtaken by the notion that she had to do something. The convulsive sobs had stopped, and it sounded ominously as if he had stopped breathing completely.

Looking into the sky, she tried to register if it was one of our planes or theirs. Years in the Blitz had taught most Londoners a thing or two about spotting enemy aircraft.

“Hold on, everyone! That plane isn’t even an enemy one. It’s ours!”

Ben gazed up, hand over his eyes to see better. “Gosh, really?” he said, surprised.

Surprised by the change in mood, Christopher had pulled away and was now looking into the sky, too. “How do you know?”

“Look,” Zelda said. “There’s a small round target on the bottom of each wing. That means it’s one of ours. It’s a little Spitfire.”

There was silence as they all watched it zipping past.

“Are you sure?” Ben was keen to know. “Mum usually rushes us inside, so we don’t get the chance to have a good look.”

“Do you see the shape of the wings? They go straight out, and they’re elliptical. Spitfires stand out from the other planes. I’ve got a booklet somewhere, all about how to spot enemy planes. In London, you need to know before rushing to find a shelter.”

They stayed in silence watching the elegant little plane flitting over them.

Then Christopher began to look scared again. “What do the Nazi planes look like?”

“They’re easy to spot. They have a black cross on the bottom of their wings. They tend to come over in formations—triangular shapes like geese migrating for the winter. Our planes are often on their own as they don’t need to stick together when they’re at home.”

“Can we see your booklet?” Ben pulled her arm to go back to the house.

“Will you teach me the difference?” Christopher asked, his face up toward hers.

    She took them inside and dug around in her suitcase for the thick booklet.

AIRCRAFT IDENTIFICATION

Friend or Foe

Immediately, they settled down at the kitchen table to study each one.

The sound of the front door heralded the return of Audrey, racing into the kitchen having heard the plane.

Instead she met a peaceful scene, the two boys reading and Zelda whipping up a leek and potato quiche for supper.

“What’s going on?” Bemused, she put down the saucepan of shared frying oil, complete with an old wire basket.

Christopher held up the booklet at her. “Zelda gave us a book with pictures of all the planes so that we know if we have to be scared or not.”

“And if it’s a Nazi plane,” Ben said, soaring around the room, “we’ll know if it’s a bomber about to drop bombs or something less frightening, like a fighter or a reconnaissance aircraft.”

Christopher smiled, as did Zelda.

Audrey only looked confounded.