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she sensed this was what he wanted.
    ‘Do you have any memories of your parents?’
    ‘No... nothing at all.’
    ‘Which means you could never mourn them.’
    ‘How could I? I was too young to even know them.’
    ‘You’ll think this is psycho-babble, McCall, but not
mourning isn’t healthy. Grief shouldn’t be left to fester in your head, you
know. It needs dealing with.’
    ‘Maybe but all I’ve got to deal with is an old photograph.’
    ‘You must build a picture of them as real people, talk to
Bea and Francis about them. They’ll have information, maybe more photographs
like this.’
    ‘No, it wasn’t them who gave me this photograph.’
    ‘So where did it come from?’
    ‘It was just posted to my boarding school.’
    ‘But not from them?’
    ‘No, they were overseas and it was posted in Ludlow.’
    ‘Didn’t it come with a letter or a note?’
    ‘No, nothing and I didn’t recognise the writing on the
envelope.’
    ‘But why would anyone think it important enough for you to
know what your mother looked like yet not say who they were?’
    McCall reached inside his cardboard box again. He took out a
torn piece of yellow newsprint flaking like leaf tobacco.
    A couple were killed on Monday when their Austin
Ruby collided with a wall near their home at Mendip Cottage, Churchill.
Elizabeth and Edward McCall died instantly. Mr McCall had a distinguished war
record, flying numerous bombing raids as an RAF gunner. Their 3 year old son is
now being cared for by friends.
    Evie shook her head.
    ‘How tragic... that lovely family picture then this
miserable little paragraph.’
    ‘Doesn’t amount to much, does it?’
    McCall’s memory box was almost empty now. A thin gold ring
and a cheap emerald brooch lay at the bottom. Before McCall closed the lid,
Evie made out a few childhood birthday cards, some letters – and a colour
photograph of a younger McCall, his arm around a smiling girl with striking
ginger hair remarkably like her own.
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘No one who’s around any more.’

 
    Chapter Six
     
    Bea could not sleep that night, either. To close her eyes
was to see only a kaleidoscope of faces – of Arie, of the Francis she had
loved, of Helen and her proxy three doors down the landing who might yet be
Mac’s salvation, and of her long-dead mother and despicable father. But most of
all at this time of Christmas, it was a child who kept her awake – the girl she
was tutoring in Prague when Hitler’s troops stole in with winter and all was
lost.
    That face, colder than marble, lived forever behind Bea’s
eyes for in the innocence of her nine years, she knew what was to happen when
few about her understood. Bea still grieved at the wickedness of it all and
damned herself for not doing more. In the bureau was a letter she had written
to her father on March 18 1939.
    I suppose the London papers will have reported the
Germans occupying Bohemia and Moravia and now their troops are everywhere here
in Prague. Those I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet have been civil enough
once they established I was British. Mr Malindine at the embassy has been
marvellous and you must not worry on my account. He is arranging my
documentation and I will soon be home. I am told that Herr Hitler has installed
himself up at the castle, horrid little man. There is a lot of confusion in the
city and people are trying to leave for the countryside as no one feels very
secure. The family I am with are Jewish and they and their little girl are
trying to get to safety in Poland.
    On Bea’s last day, she had knelt, kissed the child and wept
at having to be parted for there was love between them. The girl took both
Bea’s hands and said she should go in life and peace for nothing else could be
done. Bea ran down the steps and looked back at the house though she had
promised herself she wouldn’t. And there at the window, set behind a small pane
of glass was that austere little face, old beyond its years and framed