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He nodded.

‘Peter, I think I need to talk to this lady. Do you think you can remember where she lives?'

He nodded. Proud to be on Alice's side.

That was the mistake he made: he shouldn't have taken Alice there. Without asking permission Alice took the car and they drove towards Derby. Just as on the day he had first been brought there, the lanes were thronged with banks of wild flowers, the air blowing in hot through the wound-down windows, but this time there was no adventure, just the dread of something bad looming. Alice didn't want to talk other than to ask him what he could remember of the location, trying to work out where it was from what she knew of Derby. She made grinding noises with the gears and hung on to the wheel grimly.

It took a while to locate the small row of shops on the edge of town from his description, but he recognised the butcher's as they drove along the road. Alice parked opposite, stared at it through the car window and then headed over towards the blue door.

She was gone for a very long time. Peter was thirsty, but had no money to buy a bottle of pop from the grocer's. The shops were closing when he saw Alice finally coming out. Next to her was the girl, holding the hand of the little boy. Alice knelt down on the pavement and talked to him. He had the same pale, blowy hair as Alice, the same pointy chin. The child hung back shyly. His mother watched with a hard, satisfied look as Alice walked back to the car.

Her eyes red, Alice drove home in silence. Peter didn't dare say anything. A mounting dread now that he had stepped over a line. She raced into the house. Peter heard a blazing row going on in the study; Alice and her father shouting. Then the house went back to silence. He caught the murmur of Alice's mother talking to her in a low voice, soothing.

But he lay awake at night, listening, waiting for something else to happen. Everything felt out of balance and something was going to fall.

CHAPTER 18

Buxton, 1941

When Alice came downstairs she saw the brown cardboard box on the hallstand with the black cursive writing: Garrets Haberdasher's. She carried it through to the morning room, lifting the cardboard lid. Inside, two grey shirts and a neatly folded blazer with the badge of Peter's school.

She wanted to shout, ‘It's not his fault. He shouldn't have to pay for this.' But instead she held her cold elbows and stared at the box.

Mother came in. ‘It will have to go back,' she said. She sat down and took a slice of toast, began to pour tea into a china cup. Alice sat opposite her, the sound of mother's knife scraping the butter on the dry bread too loud. Alice pushed back her chair and went out into the garden. She climbed up to the top lawn; the sky washed empty of everything except the thinnest blue. For the first time there was a hint that summer would end. The air felt sad and quiet, unable to reach the energy of a full summer's day again.

Soon Ralph would move on to his last training camp, and then he'd be sent to fight. She couldn't bear to think about it. She looked down at the house. Figures moving in the kitchen. Peter helping Maudey with the dishes.

So far, no one had told him.

She wanted to scream. But scream what exactly? Why did she have the feeling that somewhere in the house, in the next room,
Richard's mother was there, waiting with her opinion? The last word.

There'd been a conversation she'd overheard at Amforth, in the high-ceilinged drawing room that looked out over the park. Gossip about some girl she didn't know. It wasn't that she was eavesdropping, but she couldn't stop listening to the woman's clear, matriarchal tones. ‘But darling, the father had a mistress in London. Parents getting divorced. Well, I told him he had to drop the girl, like father like daughter, don't you know. No concept of discretion. Everyone knew about it. She was quite out of the question after that. Now? He's engaged to a lovely creature from Windermere.'

Hidden behind the chair's high back Alice had sat and felt safe and unassailable, thankful that she was not that girl. Thankful that her parents were solid and dependable and boringly respectable.

Even as Alice had shouted at her mother, demanded that they keep Peter at his school, it was really the memory of that voice that made her understand that the battle was already lost. Her mother was implacable, adamant that Peter should now go to a different family, in another town: if Peter had told Alice then whom else might he tell?

As Alice ranted her mother became deeply, deeply calm. She had finally turned to Alice, her face set.

‘You are behaving like a naive child. How do you suppose we will live if people know? The boys and you too, Alice, it will affect you. People can be dismissed from their employment for something like this. Your father is sorry, and now I don't want to talk about it ever again. Not a word.'

‘Have you told Peter yet?'

‘I will speak to him this morning.'

Alice had never really seen the steel that underpinned her mother's softness. She had watched the narrow back as the small woman left to make her way upstairs.

Back in the house, her mother was gone. Alice found Maudey clearing away the chaffing dish from the sideboard. Her eyes were red.

‘Oh Maudey. What are we going to do?'

‘Your mother's told me to pack Peter's things while he's out on an errand, for him to go home. There's nowt else to do now.'

‘But they won't be expecting him at home.'

‘A letter was sent two days ago warning them he'll be on the train.' Maudey shook her head sharply and gathered up Mrs Hanbury's dirty plates.

Alice sat and scraped marmalade across the limp toast, thought of the books she would give to Peter to pack in his case, the words she would say to him to encourage him to keep on studying, learning new things. The toast was inedible.

The shrill of the doorbell sounded in the hall, followed by Maudey's raised voice. A low, masculine voice, monotonous in reply. Maudey scolding. Alice went to see what on earth was going on.

On the doorstep was a strange sight: a priest in a long black cassock, a nun in a white wimple. Maudey was blocking the doorway, holding on to the doorpost, the priest poised as if he'd been expecting to enter.

‘Ah,' he said, spotting Alice. ‘If I may come in a moment, Mrs Hanbury? There seems to be some confusion. I'm here to pick up a Peter Donoghue.'

‘I'm sorry. You are?'

‘Father O'Carroll. I've been sent by St Xavier's. I've a letter here from his father requesting that Peter be placed in our care now, since Mr Donoghue is not in a position to adequately provide for the child himself sadly, and young Peter's time here is no longer appropriate.'

Mrs Hanbury was now in the hallway. She took the letter and read it through. ‘But I thought he would be going to another family, or he'd go home. No one said he would go to an orphanage. We thought . . .'

‘If you'd just like to fetch Peter for us,' the nun insisted kindly.

‘But no one's told the child he's leaving yet. He doesn't know.'

‘We can do that,' the nun said, a smile of great sympathy on her face, as if commiserating a bereavement.

Alice stepped in. ‘Well, he's not here. He's gone on an errand. He'll be ages, so you see . . .'

‘We can wait.' The priest and the nun were now inside.

‘Mother, you can't allow this—' Alice stopped.

At the end of the hallway the door to the kitchen had opened. Peter was standing in the doorway.

‘Oh, there he is himself,' the nun said warmly. She brushed past Maudey with her implacable kindness, gliding towards where Peter stood.

‘You're going to like it, Peter, at the boys' home. You're going to come home with us. So many boys your own age. You might even get to go out to Australia once this war is over. It's lovely in Australia.'

‘Go and get your things now, boy,' the priest said firmly. ‘And be quick, mind. We have to drive back before blackout starts.'

‘Maudey, would you take him up, get his things?' said Mrs Hanbury.

Alice ran up behind Maudey, fetched an armful of books which she packed round Peter's clothes, drops of water spotting the fabric as she wiped at her nose with the back of her wrist.

Peter looked frozen, uncomprehending as Maudey gathered his belongings.

Downstairs the nun undid the case and began taking out the books, checking the titles on the spines and putting them on the carpet. After passing her hands under the shirts to check there was nothing else to take out, she closed the case.

‘But I can't come with you,' Peter said. ‘If I'm not staying here, then me dad'll be expecting me back home. You've made a mistake. I'm not an orphan. I've got a dad, me.'

‘Could it be a mistake?' said Mrs Hanbury. ‘That's what we thought. We thought he would return to his father's care now.'

‘It's been signed.' The priest brought out the letter again. ‘There, look.' Alice pulled at it so she could read it too.

‘But whose signature is this? Mrs Ivy Donoghue. Peter, did your father get married again?'

‘I don't know. Ivy was me dad's girlfriend. She don't like me, miss.'

‘So you see, it is all in order,' said the priest. ‘Best make a start, eh, Peter? This way we'll get back in time for tea. You don't want to miss that, do you, go to bed hungry?'

Alice had grabbed the letter. ‘But this is wrong. Look, it's not even signed by his father. Mother, you can't accept this.'

‘It's perfectly official now, miss,' the priest said, firmly. ‘Peter will come with us now.'

‘But you can't. I won't have it.'

‘Alice. Stop making a scene please.' Her lips pressed tight together. Alice scanned the wreck of her mother's face and seemed to wrestle with some idea, and then handed the letter back to the priest. She looked helplessly at Peter.

‘Peter, I'm so sorry.'

She hugged him, stiff as a dangling piece of card against her. Maudey had gone for a moment but reappeared with cake wrapped in greaseproof paper. He took it, held it out like an offering, a lone wise man, and then let the priest herd him outside and into the back of the car. The nun slammed the door and got into the front seat next to the priest.

Alice could do nothing but watch as the car drove away, Peter's white face looking back at them through the rear window.

CHAPTER 19

Manchester, 1941

They spent the first few days at St Xavier's Home for Destitute Boys, a cold barracks designed to overawe and raise the constant possibility of punishment. Not a place you ever went to, unless you deserved it. It was echoing and empty since the children who lived there had been evacuated to the camp set up over the border in Wales.

Peter joined the handful of waifs and strays being herded together while waiting to move on to the camp in a few days' time. Seven boys of various sizes lined up to do marching drill in the courtyard that evening, their footsteps echoing between the high walls of the building. There was something grey and sloppy with carrots that none of them wanted to eat for supper. The smallest boy spat it out, but was caned to persuade him to get on and eat the mess.

Over the next thirty-six hours they were all found wanting, enough to deserve a caning. The master followed the Navy method, approaching at a run and then leaping in the air before bringing the cane down with maximum force.

They slept in the cellars in a line. Peter could only lie on his front, his back and buttocks burning from four hot welts after his caning, for asking one question too many. A dead-eyed older boy, something in him broken, had been left in charge. If they made any noise he threw his boot over, landing like a wooden brick. Or he lumbered over and clouted the offender in person, hard.

The next day they were all driven out in a van to a vast field with rows of huts beside a large square mansion. Boys in sailor suits lined up in front of a flag. In Peter's hut the boys greeted him with a ritual pelting of blows and thumps and yells, and then went through his belongings to see if there was anything worth taking. The hut leader found the one remaining book that the nun had missed. A copy of
White Fang
.

‘You're not allowed this,' he said, holding it in front of Peter's face, and fed it into the wood stove.

It was cold at night. The sheet and blanket not enough to keep him from shivering. Walking between the hut and the latrine pits or the wash tent, lining up with the boys, stripped to the waist to wash, standing in rows for marching drill, Peter felt as alone as a penny dropped on a vast beach. He felt himself drifting out into a silence that made even the master's shouted words seem distant and noiseless.

Lessons were brief and basic. In the afternoon, digging in the surrounding fields. There was nothing too hard about the life there. But the harsh truth, like the cold, autumn wind, picked at his flesh and chilled him through and through: he was unwanted, one of the throw-out kids, tidied away into neat lines with hundreds of other destitutes.

Six weeks later – no visit or letter from Dad – he was taken to the principal's office in the main house. He knew it would end in a caning.

He couldn't believe his eyes. There was Maudey, solid and real and smelling faintly as ever of baking and clean tea towels. The principal was reading a letter in silence. Maudey had her hands folded, her face determined. She nodded at the letter.

‘There it is. That's his father's signature. So he's to come with me.' She turned to face Peter. ‘I've talked to your father and he's agreed. I'm to be your legal guardian from here on. Are you happy for that to happen, Peter? To come with me?'

He nodded quickly.

‘Then do you have a coat somewhere?'

‘I can't sanction this.' The priest stood, threatening in his black cassock. ‘Peter was born a Catholic and as such he should be raised by a Catholic guardian.'