“Any idea when I might be getting my new identity papers and be able to move to the country?” she asked.

  “Your papers were delivered a week ago, but the doctor thought you should stay here until you were over the concussion,” the nun said. “If you’re really feeling well enough to undertake a long journey, I can put your name forward in the queue.”

  “I think I’d like to go,” Josie said. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I like it here. I think you’re all bloody saints, but I can’t take the bombing no more. Every time I hear those planes, I remember being buried. I just don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe again.”

  The nun nodded. “I do understand, Mrs Banks. You lived through a horrible experience, but the thing to remember is that you did live through it. God must have wanted you here for a reason.”

  Josie laughed then. “Go on. He just didn’t want me in heaven, that’s all.”

  The nun smiled softly. “I think He’d be happy to have you up there. Just not yet.”

  “But you’ll tell them I’m ready to go out to the country, will you? I don’t want to jump no queue or anything. I won’t take someone else’s turn. But if it’s mine, then I’d like to take it.”

  “Of course.” The nun patted Josie’s good hand. “I’ll pass the message along.”

  It wasn’t until the first week in January 1941 that Josie was driven to King’s Cross Station, carrying a canvas bag containing her pitifully few personal effects. Around her neck was a label, stating who she was and where she was headed. On the platform she joined a group of evacuees, mostly children but some mothers as well. The children stood together, huddled in a tight group as if there were safety in numbers, looking wide-eyed as a train pulled out with a great puff of steam. Josie guessed for most of them, it would be the first time on a train, the first time in a great station like this. Josie wondered how many of them were leaving their mothers behind and how many no longer had mothers.

  An efficient-looking woman, one of the many the war seemed to have brought out of comfortable, middle-class drawing rooms to volunteer for the war effort, checked Josie’s label and then consulted her clipboard. “You’re bound for Peterborough, Mrs Banks. Go and stand with that group by the pillar.”

  Josie did what she was told and joined a group of mainly children.

  “Hello,” she said. “You coming for a nice adventure in the country with me?”

  She got a few weak smiles in return. They boarded the train and set off. After a while the London sprawl turned into fields and trees—all stark and bare at this time of year. Their progress was painfully slow. When a goods train approached, their train had to pull into a siding and wait, goods having priority over people these days. As they moved further north, there were patches of snow in fields. This perked up the children in the carriage, who had never seen proper white snow before. Some of them had never seen a cow or a sheep, either, and they now peered out of the windows with interest.

  “Cor, missus, them cows ain’t half big, ain’t they?” a little boy said to her. “Do you reckon they are dangerous?”

  “Probably not, if they give us milk every morning,” Josie said. “Someone has to milk them.”

  The boy looked at her as if he was just digesting what she said. “So the milk comes out of them cows, then?”

  Josie nodded. “That’s right. See them things hanging underneath? You pull on them, and milk comes out.”

  “Go on!” He looked at her and laughed. Josie didn’t admit that she had never seen it herself either.

  It was three hours later that the train pulled into Peterborough station. It had been a noisy journey, and the train had rocked and stopped and started, all of which brought on a headache for Josie. Another batch of efficient women with armbands and clipboards were waiting to direct the evacuees, moving like sheepdogs rounding up a herd of sheep. Josie was directed with a group to a waiting small green bus. She was one of the first to board and was ushered down to the back. Two children took the seat in front of her. The smaller one was crying with heart-wrenching sobs.

  Josie leaned forward and put a hand on the child’s shoulder. “It’s all right, love. We’re going to be taken where it’s safe until you can go home again.”

  “But it’s so far away,” the girl managed between sobs. “How will my mummy ever find me?”

  “We’ll write and tell her, won’t we? Those ladies will tell her, don’t you worry. And soon you can go home again.”

  “But we don’t have a home,” the little girl whimpered. “They bombed our house, and my mummy is in the hospital.”

  Josie didn’t quite know what to say to this. It echoed her own predicament, and she had no idea what might happen in her own future. The bus filled up, mainly with children, but there was one mother, with a baby and a toddler, who was given the front seat. The engine roared to life so that the whole bus shook, then it took off with a jerk, making her have to sit back in her seat. She found she was sitting next to an older girl, probably around twelve or thirteen, her hair in two thick plaits beneath a brown beret, her thin, pale and serious face not showing any emotion. She was looking down, focusing on her hands, avoiding eye contact.

  “Doesn’t look too bad, does it?” Josie said, glancing out of a window as suburbs melded into countryside. “No sign of bombs out here. What’s the betting we’ll get some decent food, eh?”

  The girl glanced up and gave a polite smile.

  “I’m Josie,” Josie said. “I got bombed out. How about you?”

  “I am Lottie,” the girl said. There was something about her accent that was foreign.

  “You’re not English?”

  The girl shook her head. “No, I am German.” When she saw Josie’s look of horror, she explained, “I am also Jewish. My parents sent me to England with the Kindertransport. Do you know of this?”

  Josie shook her head.

  “Before the war started, when things were getting bad for Jewish people, some parents sent their children to England to be safe.”

  “So you came here without your mum and dad?”

  Lottie nodded, then looked down at her hands again. “They were not allowed to leave. Only children.”

  “That must have been very hard for you,” Josie said. “How are they doing in Germany? Do you hear from them often?”

  She saw a spasm of pain cross Lottie’s face. “Since the war started, no letters come from Germany. I do not know if they are dead or alive. I hope for the best because my father is a professor at the university—an important scientist—but I do not know.”

  “So where have you been staying all this time? In London?”

  Again a fleeting spasm on Lottie’s face. “Jewish families took us in. I was sent to a house with two older women, sisters, in Golders Green. Do you know it? Many Jewish people live there.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a nice part of London. Was it a nice house?”

  “Yes, a nice house, but the women, they were not nice. They did not want a child in the house, they wanted a servant. They made me do everything—carry the coal for the fires, scrub the steps. I heard one of them telling a friend that they had been able to save money and get rid of their cleaning woman now that they had me. I did not understand much English, and they scolded me when I got things wrong. I was very unhappy.”

  “Mean old cows,” Josie said, making Lottie grin. “So what did you do?”

  “When I could understand better English, I heard of a Jewish organization in London—a charity to help Jewish people. I did not go to school one day and went there instead. There I met a very kind lady, and she promised to help me. She came to see me at the house in Golders Green, and she told the two women they should be ashamed of themselves for treating a fellow Jew that way, and she took me with her. I stayed in her flat, then it got bombed. That is why you see me here.”

  “Was your kind lady all right? And you? Not hurt?”

  “No. We went to the shelter. We were safe, but the house was no more.”

  “I got bombed, too,” Josie said. “My house was flattened.”

  “And you were hurt?” The girl looked at her with concern.

  “Not too bad. Not nearly as badly as some. I reckon some good country air will do us both good, don’t you?”

  “I hope so,” Lottie said. “I hope the new family will not treat me like a servant as well.”

  “Don’t you worry, my love,” Josie said, wishing she had use of her right arm so that she could put it around the girl. “You’ve got me now. I’ll make sure you’re well taken care of.”

  And she saw Lottie blink back a tear as she glanced up again.

  The bus had left the city of Peterborough behind and was now negotiating narrow country roads. On either side flat fields stretched away, covered in a dusting of new snow.

  “It snows here,” Lottie exclaimed, giving a hint of animation for the first time. “Just like at home in Germany.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “In Munich. In the south, near the Alps. We always went skiing in the winter. It was very nice. Papa is a good skier. He taught me, and he carved my first pair of skis from a plank of wood.”

  Josie heard the wistfulness in her voice. “Don’t look like you’ll be doing much skiing where we’re going,” she said. “Flat as a pancake here, isn’t it?”

  “Excuse me?” Lottie looked puzzled. “What kind of cake?”

  “Sorry. English expression. ‘Flat as a pancake’ means—you know what a pancake is?” She mimed it.

  “Ja. Pfannkuchen? You eat?”

  “Yes. So as flat as that. Get it?”

  The girl laughed. “Now I understand. I learn more English every day, but some idioms I still don’t understand.”

  “I think you speak very well, considering you haven’t been here very long.”

  “I did not learn much from the women. They called me things like lazy and stupid. But the school was good. I hope there will be a school for me to attend out here. I always expected to go to university one day.”

  “University! Blimey.” Josie shook her head. Then she said, “You hold on to that dream, love. I had to leave school at fourteen. I’ve always regretted it. Always wanted to learn more.”

  “I love to read, do you?” Lottie asked. “They let me take books from the school library, but those women did not like me to read, so I had to read in bed, late at night.”

  “I like to read, too,” Josie said. “Let’s hope there’s a library somewhere nearby, shall we?”

  Lottie nodded, and they exchanged a smile.

  CHAPTER 6

  After about fifteen minutes, the bus approached a small town and came to a halt outside the railway station. Josie had no idea which town it was, as all names had been removed to deter an invading force. The mother and then children in the front rows were ushered off, carrying their bags. The bags looked as pitifully small as Josie’s. How were they all going to survive with one change of clothes? She wondered. What would that mother do for nappies? At least Josie didn’t play in the mud or wet the bed the way children would. The bus moved on again, leaving the little town behind. Flat countryside stretched out on either side, sometimes with water-filled ditches between the fields. Nothing was growing at this time of year. The only thing that broke the horizon was a distant church steeple. The bus passed through a village—just a small cluster of houses along the road and a church with a tall spire. Josie had noted there were no signposts, or they had been blacked out, but the board in front of the church read, “St Mary’s Church, Deeping St Nicholas.”

  “Silly name for a place, isn’t it?” Josie turned to Lottie, who managed a smile.

  “I’m sorry, I feel not too well,” Lottie said. “The bus sways and bumps, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not feeling too chipper myself,” Josie confessed. “It shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  “Where do you think they will take us?”

  “I’ve no idea, love. I don’t even know what county we are in. Somewhere in East Anglia, it must be, because I’ve heard of flat, fenny country like this. See the water in those dykes? We must be quite close to the sea, I reckon.”

  “The sea?” Lottie’s eyes lit up for a moment. “I have never seen the sea. I have been to lakes in Germany, but the sea is only in the north.”

  “I’ve only been a couple of times myself,” Josie confessed.

  They came to another village, and the bus slowed to a halt beside a war memorial from the Great War. The woman who had been riding at the front called out two names, and two small boys got out. There was a farmer waiting nearby. The woman and the farmer had a conversation, then he nodded. The boys were introduced to him. He lifted them up on to the back of a horse-drawn cart, and they moved off as the bus started up again. This was repeated until there were just four of them in the back of the bus. Josie was definitely feeling sick, although maybe it was from hunger, as it had been hours since breakfast, when the bus came to another cluster of houses.

  “If we don’t get them placed here, we’re out of luck,” the woman said to the driver, glancing back at Josie and the children that remained. “We haven’t tried here before because of the proximity, you know, but we’ll have to see what we can do.” She looked back down the bus. “All right, everyone. This is where you get off.”

  “What’s it called, miss?” a girl who had been sitting in front of Josie asked.

  “I believe it’s Sutton St Giles, if we are in the right place. Let’s see, shall we?”

  They climbed down, one by one. The big-boned girl of about ten or eleven went first, then extended her hand to help a tiny mite of about four down. The little one was like a pretty china doll with lots of light, curly hair tied up in a red bow and wide blue eyes that now looked around her in terror. Josie let Lottie go next, and she came last. The four of them stood, gasping in the frigid wind that swept across the bare fields. The woman in charge looked around.

  “I don’t see . . . ,” she began. A woman had just come out of the village shop, a basket over her arm, a scarf held up to her face.

  “Excuse me,” said Efficient Lady. “This is Sutton St Giles?”

  The woman looked at her suspiciously. “We’re not supposed to say, in case it’s the enemy.”

  “Of course we’re not the enemy, you silly woman,” Efficient Lady snapped. “This is the group of evacuees from London that you were notified about. There were supposed to be volunteers here to take them in.”

  “They were expecting you hours ago,” the woman said. She had a country accent, with its pronounced r’s, and spoke slowly and deliberately compared to the staccato speech of the cockney Josie was used to. “Mrs Badger got cold waiting, and her husband sent her home on account of her weak chest.”

  “Mrs Badger.” Efficient Lady consulted her clipboard again. “Yes. She is down as a possible volunteer host. Can you tell me where her house is?”

  “See there, across the vegetable patch, with the smoke coming out of the chimney.”

  “Oh yes,” Efficient Lady said. “Can we get up to the house by bus?”

  The woman laughed. “I don’t reckon so. It be only a muddy track, you see. Alf Badger takes his horse and cart up it, but no motor vehicles.”

  “I don’t suppose they are on the telephone?”

  This produced signs of mirth from the woman. “None of us have the telephone around here, except for her at the big house and the police station in Holbeach.”

  The clipboard lady sighed. “Right. It looks as if we have to walk. Are you ready, children?” She glanced down at the little girl’s shoes. They were dainty ankle straps in red patent.

  “I’m afraid those shoes are most unsuitable, Dorothy. Do you not have gumboots with you?”

  The little girl shook her head, about to cry again.

  “I can carry her maybe,” said the big-boned girl. She had a round, eager face and ash-blonde hair that poked out from under a knitted hat. In many ways she reminded Josie of her siblings, and she remembered that her family had supposedly come from Norfolk in this part of the country.

  “Are you her sister?” the woman asked, sounding surprised.

  “No, miss. I just took care of her on the platform because she was in a right state about being left alone. She didn’t want to leave her mum.”

  “Well, you’re a kind girl. What’s your name again?”

  “Sheila, miss.”

  “Are we all going to that house?” Josie asked.

  “I’m not really sure. I believe it’s just the two younger girls, but you’d all better come along.” She turned to Lottie. “Maybe you can carry the little one’s bag, dear, and I’ll carry Sheila’s, and Sheila can give her a piggyback.”

  They set off. The track had been muddy but had frozen hard, making the going treacherous. At times there were icy puddles, and they slithered and stumbled. On either side were garden beds with cabbages and other winter vegetables growing. Beyond them were what looked like fruit trees. The cottage itself was whitewashed with a red roof and looked appealing, but Josie was already worrying. What if they got all this way and then were not welcomed? She knew so little about the evacuation process. Did people have to take in strangers, or was it purely voluntary? It seemed as if this village hadn’t been tapped before for some reason. They were all panting so that their breath hung in the frigid air like steam by the time they reached the front door. Efficient Lady was gasping harder than any of them and had to wait a while to catch her breath before she rapped on the door. At once came the sound of barking, and little Dorothy cried out, wrapping her arms tightly around Sheila’s neck.