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    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)
    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)
    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)
    Ebook646 pages9 hours

    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)

    By Jackie French

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    About this ebook

    THE STORY IS EQUAL PARTS DOWNTOWN ABBEY AND WARTIME ACTION , WITH ENOUGH ROMANCE AND INTRIGUE TO MAKE IT 100% NOT- PUT- DOWN-ABLE. Australian Woman's Weekly

    A tale of espionage, love and passionate heroism.


    Inspired by true events, this is the story of how society's 'lovely ladies' won a war.

    Each year at secluded Shillings Hall, in the snow-crisped English countryside, the mysterious Miss Lily draws around her young women selected from Europe's royal and most influential families. Her girls are taught how to captivate a man - and find a potential husband - at a dinner, in a salon, or at a grouse shoot, and in ways that would surprise outsiders. For in 1914, persuading and charming men is the only true power a woman has.

    Sophie Higgs is the daughter of Australia's king of corned beef and the only 'colonial' brought to Shillings Hall. Of all Miss Lily's lovely ladies, however, she is also the only one who suspects Miss Lily's true purpose.

    As the chaos of war spreads, women across Europe shrug off etiquette. The lovely ladies and their less privileged sisters become the unacknowledged backbone of the war, creating hospitals, canteens and transport systems where bungling officials fail to cope. And when tens of thousands can die in a single day's battle, Sophie must use the skills Miss Lily taught her to prevent war's most devastating weapon yet.

    But is Miss Lily heroine or traitor?

    And who, exactly, is she?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateApr 1, 2017
    ISBN9780732298548
    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)
    Author

    Jackie French

    Jackie French AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children's Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016, Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children's literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia's most popular children's authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi, to her much-loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. 'A book can change a child's life. A book can change the world' was the primary philosophy behind Jackie's two-year term as Laureate. jackiefrench.com facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

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    Reviews for Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1)

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    • 4/5
      Daughter of a wealthy Australian businessman, Sophie Higgs is among a select number of young women invited to Shillings Hall in England. There she receives instructions in etiquette and the power of charm from the mysterious Miss Lily. But with the coming of a world war, the women of Europe will need to find and exert different kinds of strength in Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies by author Jackie French.

      Indeed, don't let the lovely book cover and the almost too lovely title give you the wrong impression. This isn't a sweet little tale about English teas and parties (the story's teas and parties notwithstanding.) This novel based on true events surrounding the Great War is very much a war story, and oftentimes a gruesome one at that.

      It's also a coming of age story. I couldn't always make sense of the heroine, but I can appreciate the strength and purpose she finds in wartime.

      That purpose is what led me to read this novel, since I first read a companion story, With Love from Miss Lily. Admittedly, that Christmas tale, in 30 pages or so, packed more of a punch for me than this novel did in over 500. There were longish lulls in this book between the parts that moved me.

      Still, the overall substance and intrigue of the plot made it worth it. Granted, I was almost turned off the book during the last fifth of it. (Even with the roles feminine wiles play in war maneuvers here, three semi-seductions in back-to-back scenes is overkill, and the ending chapters stretch and complicate matters maybe more than necessary.)

      Nevertheless, my historical-fiction-loving self is curious about the promise of postwar challenges here. If/when Book Two of this series becomes available in the US, I plan on reading it.

    Book preview

    Miss Lily's Lovely Ladies (Miss Lily, #1) - Jackie French

    Chapter 1

    … that was when I realised that war is as natural to a man as chasing a ball on a football field. War is a scuttling cockroach, something that a woman would instinctively stamp on. Women bear the pain of childbirth, and most deeply feel the agony of their children’s deaths. Could one marshal women to fight against the dreams of war?

    But women have no power, except what they cajole from men.

    Miss Lily, 1908

    FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

    ‘Stop!’ yelled Sophie.

    She peered out of the car window through the night and gun smoke at the huddled mound on the bomb-scarred track.

    The blob became a dog, large and lifeless, its dark fur almost invisible in the smoke. The dog’s blood showed red and vivid in the headlights. Beyond them, the big guns echoed like a singer trying to be heard over the orchestra: the constant rumble and belch of the front line.

    Three years of war had taught Sophie this: if blood flowed, the patient was still alive. This dog lived.

    Tomorrow yet more men would die, even more horribly. But how could she leave a dog?

    Only a minute, she thought as the driver pulled on the brake. She pushed open the door.

    ‘What the damnation are you doing?’ They were the first words the driver had spoken since he had greeted her politely again outside the French hotel, opened the rear door for her and the picnic basket, then driven, hour upon hour, in resentful silence, through the afternoon, through yellow smoke-lit dusk, and now through the night.

    She’d hoped desperately he would say something about her quest, about her reappearance in his life, ask why she had been in a hotel bedroom with a half-dressed French général. He hadn’t. Now it was her turn not to answer.

    Instead she stumbled out of the back seat, into the darkness. The moon crouched on the world’s dark ceiling above her. The land on either side looked frozen into shattered glass. Flat land. Black glass, mud and soot, a flash of orange perhaps a mile away, giving a sudden glimpse of tangled barbed wire draped with what Sophie hoped were rags, not flesh.

    This world was dead. Everything here was dead, except for the two of them. And, just perhaps, a giant dog.

    She kneeled and touched its fur. The dog opened its eyes.

    ‘Good dog. It’s all right, you’re a good dog.’ She spoke automatically.

    ‘We’re in France, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t suppose this mutt understands English.’

    She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. His face was white, his hands clenched in fear or anger.

    The dog lifted its head, trustingly, and laid it on her lap.

    A gun boomed to their left, louder than the ones before. She was beginning to make out the sounds of the different explosions now.

    The dog made a small noise. It almost sounded like a plea.

    ‘There’s blood on its shoulder,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s been shot.’

    ‘Things do get shot in war.’

    ‘Help me carry it back to the car.’

    In the darkness, the man didn’t move. ‘You’re worried about a dog? You might have thought of my chances of survival before you had me ordered here.’

    ‘Fine. I’ll carry it myself.’

    ‘You wouldn’t get a dog that size two yards.’ He bent swiftly, then cradled the massive animal in his arms. ‘You don’t seem to realise that every second we spend here is dangerous. Open the door …’

    He laid the dog on the leather seat, beside the picnic basket Madame had packed for them. Sophie pulled out the Thermos. She knew you shouldn’t give a dog coffee, but this would be mostly chicory, and it needed fluids.

    She pooled a little into one of her hands. The dog raised its head and lapped. She unwrapped the chicken and pulled off most of the breast meat. The dog swallowed it in three gulps, then licked her fingers, wanting more, and gulped down the bread she offered too.

    She looked at the man in the front seat, who was peering at the road. Yesterday she’d loved him, had thought he loved her.

    Hannelore had said love between a man and a woman was illusion, bright colours to disguise the necessary distributions of power involved in mating. But Miss Lily had once whispered, ‘Oh, yes, there is love.’

    Would Sophie see Hannelore or Miss Lily again? Perhaps she’d die here. Perhaps Miss Lily and Hannelore were already dead.

    The car swerved onto another track. She leaned forward. ‘Are you sure we’re going the right way?’

    The man at the wheel didn’t glance back. ‘No.’

    ‘I told you, this is urgent.’

    He shot her a look. ‘I’m doing my best. Do you think there are maps of battlegrounds?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Sophie.

    His lips quirked into a reluctant smile. ‘You’re right. But I don’t have one.’

    ‘I should have asked the général.’

    ‘I doubt the général had a map with him when he lent you his car and my services earlier. It’s not the sort of thing one takes to a seduction.’

    ‘I don’t suppose it is.’ She tried to keep her voice light. The dog slobbered gently on her lap.

    The ground beside them exploded. Dirt and pebbles rained down onto the car. For a few seconds the windscreen was black, then the dirt fell off.

    ‘Holy hell.’

    She had never heard a man swear before. Not at home in the paddocks — not even the men they’d nursed in the past few years.

    Sophie swallowed, trying not to sound afraid. A man doesn’t like to hear fear in a woman’s voice, Miss Lily said. Fear is an accusation that he has failed in his duty to protect you. You may sound apprehensive, but never shrill. ‘That came from nearby.’

    ‘Too near. They’re firing at us. They’ll fire again as soon as they reload.’ He peered at something through the smoke.

    She tried to see what he was looking at. A farmhouse, she realised, or at least its walls, the rubble of its sheds, about twenty yards away.

    He swung the wheel towards it suddenly. ‘When I say so, get out. Run behind the nearest wall.’

    She heard the next explosion in front of them an instant before she felt it. He wrenched the car onto the farmhouse cobbles.

    ‘Move!’ He leaped out as the car jerked to a stop.

    Another shell ripped across the cobbles, from a different direction this time. Sophie flung herself out of the car and behind the farmhouse wall, landing hard on her knees.

    The edge of the wall exploded. She shut her eyes till she thought the debris had stopped falling, then checked her arms, her deeply inappropriate silk dress, her shredded stockings.

    Stupid. She would have felt wounds or a burn before she saw them. Instinct had taken over.

    Instinct is what drives the world, Miss Lily said. Use it, enjoy it, but never let it take control.

    Sophie peered through darkness that was more dust than night. The car was intact. The dog lay unmoving on the leather seat. Two steps and she had it hoisted like a sack of potatoes over her shoulder. She staggered under its weight.

    ‘Sophie! Get over here!’ His voice came from what looked like a fireplace, set deep in the wall.

    Once — a year ago, a world ago — this had been a kitchen. Some French farmwife had scrubbed the hearth. Stews had bubbled here, and pots of strong coffee for the men to dip their lumps of sugar into. Now it was two walls and a patch of sagging roof, with a bird’s nest up in the rafters.

    ‘Hurry!’

    It took a second for her to realise that the fireplace would protect them from the shells.

    Perhaps. For a while. Until the German soldiers followed with their guns and bayonets. But perhaps, Sophie thought desperately, they would be English, French, even Australian …

    Two more shots. The picnic basket, still in the car, shattered behind her. Madame’s roast chicken hung in an incongruous crucifixion on the steering wheel.

    She tried to run under the weight of the dog, felt his arms grab it, then pull her into the safety of the chimney as more shells ripped the air.

    ‘You should have grabbed the picnic basket, not the dog.’ But he laid the dog down gently as he said it, at the back of the chimney where it would be safest.

    The dog sat up and stared from one to the other.

    The driver rubbed its long, fluffy ears. ‘Sorry, old boy, no more chicken for either of us. How’s the motorcar?’

    ‘Intact. They shot the basket, though.’

    ‘Probably by accident. They want to kill us, not destroy the car. They’ll want to use it.’

    ‘The whole German army can’t escape in one car.’

    He shrugged, causing a small cascade of soot from the chimney. ‘There aren’t many out there, I don’t think. Two groups shooting at each other. Might only be half a dozen men. Patrols, maybe. Lost like us. We just happened to get in the middle.’

    Except you’re here because of me, thought Sophie. This man had loved her. But he was here because of orders, not love. ‘So one lot are our chaps?’

    Another shrug, more careful this time. ‘Maybe. Or the French. I don’t know this part of the line. We won’t know who’s shooting who till one lot takes this place, or till another gang rolls up to help them.’

    She glanced out into the shadows. One lot of shots had come from what she thought might be a hen house. The return fire had come from a crumpled barn. ‘When do you think that will be?’

    ‘Tonight. Tomorrow morning. A decade’s time. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last three years, us and the Boche. You capture a few yards of mud, hold it for days or weeks or months. Then you die as the other side takes it back again.’

    ‘And now we’re in the middle.’

    With difficulty: ‘Sophie, I’m sorry. I must have taken the wrong turn in the dark. The front should still be a mile from here.’

    ‘Maybe it moved. It’s not your fault.’ Suddenly she began to cry, trying to swallow the sobs.

    He put an arm around her tentatively, then, when she didn’t shrug it off, hugged harder. ‘Sophie …’

    The dog whined. It laid a bearlike paw on her silk skirt. She bent down and hugged it, savouring its warmth, its doggy smell, like the sheepdogs of Thuringa, even its slobber.

    ‘I’m not scared. Not for myself.’ She peered up at his face in the grimy darkness. ‘But men are going to die if I don’t do something.’

    He sat too, his back against the chimney wall. ‘Men are already dying. Have died. Will die. This is war.’

    ‘I don’t mean die from being shot. Worse. Impossibly worse.’

    Another blast — a rocket, this time — hit the ground outside.

    He waited till the ground stopped shaking, till the cracked tiles no longer fell around them. ‘I’ve seen men hung on the barbed wire of No Man’s Land who took three days to die, their eyes pecked out by crows, screaming all the time. I’ve seen myself hanging there, in nightmares. Tell me one thing you’ve seen in your drawing rooms that is worse than that.’

    I’ve seen a woman scream in childbirth for two days, then die as her blood drained from her body, she thought. I’ve seen a man try to make a life with no eyes left, and half a face. But he was right. This was his world, not hers. And he had tried to protect her.

    She wiped her eyes, feeling the sting of soot. She knew she needed food, though she wasn’t hungry. ‘I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?’

    ‘Chocolate.’ He took it from his pocket and passed it to her.

    A big block, she saw gratefully. The dog shoved its furry face towards her. ‘Oh, no you don’t. You just ate bread and chicken.’ The dog sat back, drooling reproachfully. ‘You don’t have a pistol in your pocket too?’

    ‘No. There’s one in the car. But I was dressed for an afternoon off at the hotel, not war.’

    ‘I do. But then I wasn’t at the hotel for the same reason as you.’ She reached into her own pocket and pulled it out. Somehow the pistol seemed smaller here, with the massed armies of so many nations around them.

    He stared at it. ‘Where in damnation did you get that?’ He reached for it.

    She pulled the pistol back. ‘I can shoot a ’roo a hundred yards away.’

    ‘I can shoot a grouse. They’re smaller.’ He hesitated. ‘Keep the pistol.’

    She had been going to, but suddenly the meaning of his words hit home. The Germans out there would kill him. But they might spare her. For a while, until they’d finished.

    ‘What else have we got?’

    He reached into his pockets. ‘My identity card. Francs. Pen knife. It’s got tweezers and a nail file.’

    ‘Just what I need right now, a nail file.’

    ‘What about you?’

    ‘Francs, pounds.’ A lot of English pounds, but she didn’t tell him that. ‘Four diamond rings.’

    ‘You brought diamonds into a war zone?’

    ‘Diamonds are easier to carry than money.’

    She broke off six squares of the chocolate, then handed him the rest.

    He shook his head. ‘Keep it.’

    ‘Forget gallantry. You need to eat. If there’s any chance of getting away from here, we have to keep going.’

    ‘For heaven’s sake, why? What’s so important that you would risk our lives to get to the front line?’

    The comfort of the chocolate vanished. ‘Why didn’t you ask before?’

    ‘I was angry.’

    ‘You’re not angry now?’

    ‘Three hours ago I found the woman I thought I loved in the bedroom of a French général.’

    A small hole ripped in Sophie’s heart. But she had known already. How could any man still love her after what she had done today?

    He looked at her steadily through the erratically gun-lit gloom. ‘I’m probably going to die on this expedition of yours, and that makes me angry too. But you know what makes me angriest? You haven’t even had the courtesy to tell me why.’ His gesture took in the chimney, the silent dog, the thousand shades of yellow, white and red from the explosions beyond them.

    You could have asked me, she thought, instead of sulking as you drove.

    Then she glanced at him, his face white in the flashes of shellfire. She had been wrong. His silence had been fear, not pique. She had misjudged him, badly.

    ‘The Germans are going to try a new weapon. Worse than guns or chlorine gas.’

    ‘Another sort of land engine?’

    ‘No.’

    ‘Then what?’

    She hesitated. Could she trust him? He might even refuse to keep going if he knew what was ahead of them.

    What would Miss Lily advise now? More tears, whispered Miss Lily.

    Sophie glanced at the poor helpless dog, its eyes closed, faintly panting. This shouldn’t be a dog’s war. Now the tears were real.

    ‘I … I can’t tell you.’ She pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose.

    It worked. He put his arm around her again. His voice was gentler now. ‘You think Miss Sophie Higgs can stop the enemy?’

    ‘No. But I can warn our officers in the field to get their men away. I tried to speak to someone with authority back in England, but I couldn’t manage it. Not in time.’

    ‘So you’re going to try to speak to whoever is in command at Ypres? Even if we survive, you won’t get past the first sentry post.’

    You have no idea what I can do, she thought. Sentries are only men too. ‘I will be in the général’s car, with a decorated English officer driving. And I’ve got a letter.’

    ‘One letter? Who’s it from? The King?’

    ‘A German princess.’

    He stared at her silently. But it wasn’t silence; there was no silence here. Even the earth vibrated with the shelling a mile away. Every few minutes another rocket screamed outside.

    His voice was wary now. ‘A Hun? How exactly did you get a letter from a German princess in wartime? How do you even know one?’

    She was suddenly impossibly weary. ‘The letter came via Switzerland. I met the princess through Miss Lily.’

    The wariness was as thick as syrup now. ‘Who’s Miss Lily?’

    ‘She’s the cousin of the Earl of Shillings.’ Another lie. But still the easiest explanation. ‘She … taught me all that matters.’

    She could sense his suspicion growing. ‘Is she a spy?’

    ‘No.’ Though she was no longer sure if that was true.

    ‘Why couldn’t Miss Lily help you herself, then? Or the earl?’

    ‘I couldn’t contact the earl in time. I … I don’t know where Miss Lily is.’ If she said that Miss Lily had vanished at the beginning of the war, he would assume that Miss Lily was a spy, and that Sophie was a spy too. But there was no quick way to explain Miss Lily.

    A shadow flickered past the door. German, she thought, recognising the helmet. The soldier gave a cry as blood blossomed on his uniform. He fell onto the cobbles, spasmed twice in the light from the rocket fire, then lay still. The dog shivered, its head in Sophie’s lap as if to say, ‘I am a sheep-herding dog. Dead men are not my business.’

    Sophie stared out at the body in the flash-lit darkness. Last week I’d have tried to help him, she thought. Or at least wondered if I should. But my life isn’t mine to risk just now.

    She felt the warmth of her companion’s hands as he pulled her further back against the inner wall of the chimney. He unwrapped another square of chocolate, broke it into halves and gave her one, then pulled her into his arms again. For warmth, she thought, feeling the chocolate’s sweetness melt on her tongue. And then, No, he’s trying to cover me so that if someone shoots us they’ll hit him, not me.

    Is he doing it because a man protects a woman, or because he loves me, in spite of everything?

    The dog looked at them, considering, then clambered onto Sophie and lay down, curling as much of itself as possible on top of her. Its fur was warm, as comforting as the arms around her.

    ‘I don’t know you, do I?’ he said at last. ‘I never did.’

    ‘No. I’m sorry.’ She wasn’t quite sure what she was apologising for: for bringing him here, or for failing to tell him the whole truth. Maybe it wasn’t even an apology. She was just … sorry. For him. For herself. For the giant blood-spattered dog across her lap. For the whole bloody mess of war. And that isn’t swearing, she thought. Just truth.

    The guns had hypnotised her. That, and his warmth so close to her. She had faced this burden alone all week. Would he understand? And if he did, would he still try to help her?

    He stroked the dog’s furry back. It put its head on its paws, slobbering again, and reassured.

    ‘By tomorrow,’ he said quietly, ‘we may be dead. So eat your chocolate and tell me about Miss Lily. Tell me about yourself — all of it, not just the bits I knew before. Tell me everything.’

    ‘My whole life?’ asked Sophie.

    ‘We have time.’ She caught a glimpse of a half-smile in the growing dark. ‘And if we run out of time, we will be dead. How did an Australian girl meet the cousin of the Earl of Shillings?’

    He had risked his life for her. She owed him the truth. ‘It started with corned beef,’ she said.

    Chapter 2

    Never try to manipulate a child. Children sense false smiles. Speak to them honestly and they’ll like you, which is the best way to charm their mothers too.

    Miss Lily, 1913

    SYDNEY, 1902

    The most important problem in life, decided Sophie, was how to spoon up the last of the ice cream and caramel sauce from the silver dish before her. When you are seven and three-quarters, and visiting the Quong Tart Tearooms, leaving a spoonful is a tragedy.

    Scraping the edges of the dish would make a noise that was unladylike. Other patrons might hear — the women in the feathered hats that only other women would appreciate, their bodies erectly corseted; the girls in their frills and white muslin dresses, eating with as much greed as she was, though politely, of course. A lady must always be polite.

    Here at the Tearooms, where men were a rarity — Quong Tart was a Chinaman, so he somehow didn’t count — female gluttony was allowed in a pact unspoken by any of the patrons. Plump scones damp with melted butter, piled with raspberry jam or thick with dates; apricot jam on pikelets with cream … the servings were lavish. A woman who moved food gracefully around a plate in front of men could eat with visible pleasure here.

    The Quong Tart Tearooms also made The Best Ice Cream in Sydney. Sophie knew that for certain, because her father employed The Best Cook in Sydney, like he bought the best of everything, but Mrs Cleaver’s ice cream was like toffee. It stretched. The Tearooms’ ice cream was like frozen clouds. Perhaps the ice cream at home was intimidated by the portraits on the wall: Papa in his best waistcoat, holding the silver chain of his watch; Mama looking like the angel she now was.

    ‘Sophie, have you finished?’ asked Miss Thwaites patiently. She was a tall woman, with a face like a friendly cow.

    ‘Yes, thank you, Miss Thwaites,’ said Sophie.

    Miss Thwaites was no Gentlewoman in Reduced Circumstances, who taught girls a deliberately cultivated ignorance. Miss Thwaites’s father was an English vicar, and her mother had been ‘an honourable’. Miss Thwaites had even attended Somerville Hall at Oxford on a scholarship — though not gained a degree, of course. Women couldn’t be awarded degrees, even at The Best University in the world.

    It was good that Miss Thwaites was Sophie’s governess, especially now that Mama was an angel. She had never known her mother, but she loved Miss Thwaites. Miss Thwaites was also the most interesting person she had ever met, even more interesting than Papa. If Miss Thwaites hadn’t had four sisters, she might never have had to become a governess, never have come to Australia, never have joined the Women’s Suffrage Association. Sophie was pretty sure Miss Thwaites had singlehandedly got Australian women the vote.

    She clicked the heels of her white patent-leather shoes against the chair, earning a frown from Miss Thwaites. She stopped kicking — not because Miss Thwaites would lock her in a cupboard when they got home, like one of the Suitable Friends whispered her governess did, but because she liked Miss Thwaites. Instead she looked around the Tearooms while Miss Thwaites finished her scone.

    The ladies all looked much the same, in their silks and feathered hats, their big drooping sleeves that almost — but never quite — trailed in the jam.

    The waitresses were more interesting, like the one who limped, as Papa did, but only as she approached the doors to the kitchen, just like Papa tried to limp only at home and not in the street. The limping waitress always gave Sophie two wafers in her ice cream too, standing up like tiny sails.

    Would ice cream float like a paper boat? wondered Sophie. Miss Thwaites would say it wasn’t done, even if Sophie were willing to risk her treat.

    ‘But if I do it, then it can be done,’ Sophie had said once.

    ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Miss Thwaites had replied, but she’d said it with a smile. Miss Thwaites was iron under her grey silk, but it was warm iron, like the stair railings on a sunny winter’s day.

    Miss Thwaites finished her scone, dabbed her mouth with her napkin and looked up, a signal to an attentive waitress that they were finished.

    The not-quite-limping waitress came with their bill, and a pen and ink well. Miss Thwaites signed the bill in her sloping handwriting, pushing the nib neatly up the paper like a mob of ants pushing a stone up a pyramid. Papa kept an account at the Tearooms, and at David Jones and Anthony Hordern’s Palace Emporium and Percy Marks the jewellers and any other place Miss Thwaites might need to take his daughter.

    There’s no point stinting when you have only one chick, Papa said. Whatever Sophie wanted she should have, and he didn’t want to be bothered at work by a governess asking for five pounds for a new bonnet and some ribbons.

    ‘My dear Miss Thwaites! And little Miss Sophronia Higgs, isn’t it?’

    Miss Thwaites looked up, but didn’t stand, which meant that this woman must be Encroaching. Lots of people Encroached, Miss Thwaites said, when your father was the richest man in New South Wales. Miss Thwaites’s smile diminished, from Friendly to Just Barely Polite.

    The woman noticed. Her own smile widened. Definitely Encroaching: either a governess or a recent widow. Governess, Sophie decided — a recent widow couldn’t eat scones at the Tearooms, and a widow of longer standing would wear silk and jet jewellery like the Dear Queen used to, not shiny poplin.

    The boy at the woman’s side was a few years older than Sophie, his blond hair neatly oiled and wearing a dark blue velvet knickerbocker suit. He looked at her curiously.

    Suitable Friends came to afternoon tea every Tuesday and Thursday — daughters of other businessmen, and sometimes their brothers too. This boy was not one of the Suitables.

    He might even be interesting.

    ‘Do sit down,’ said Sophie, in the tone she had heard one of the Suitables’ mothers use.

    Miss Thwaites’s top lip tightened, but she couldn’t draw back after Sophie’s offer. ‘Please do. Sophie, this is Miss Wilson. And this must be Master Malcolm Overhill?’

    Sophie looked at the boy even more curiously. The Overhills had Warildra, the property out at Bald Hill, next door to their own Thuringa. Mr Overhill was the local Member of Parliament. But she had never met the Overhills. She was vaguely aware that many people thought the Overhills Most Suitable Indeed, but Miss Thwaites said that Australian squatters were just jumped-up sheep farmers. Sophie imagined the squatters in their moleskins, jumping over sheep. Miss Thwaites said that a man like Papa, a man who had made his own fortune, was worth a thousand sheep farmers.

    The Encroacher sat. The boy — Malcolm — sat too. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Miss Thwaites,’ said the Encroacher. ‘It has been so long since I spoke to anyone from home …’

    Sophie looked at the boy.

    ‘Hello.’

    ‘You’re the corned-beef girl.’ The boy gave a slight snigger.

    ‘What’s funny about corned beef?’ demanded Sophie coldly.

    The boy smirked. ‘Gentlemen don’t own factories.’

    Definitely Unsuitable. And stupid. Sophie sought a weapon. ‘Why don’t you have a tutor? Only girls have governesses.’

    Malcolm flushed. ‘She’s my sister’s governess. She’s just taking me to buy a new school uniform.’

    ‘I think she’s really your nurse,’ said Sophie flatly.

    Malcolm reddened. ‘She’s not!’ He lowered his voice. He glanced at his governess, but the woman was intent on trying to interest Miss Thwaites, one gloved hand resting on the other woman’s unwilling one. ‘You’re the girl whose mother vanished.’

    Sophie stared. ‘My mama died.’

    The boy shook his head. ‘No, she didn’t. She just vanished. But Mama says she probably is dead. There was an article in The Bulletin a few months ago saying the case has never been solved,’ he added with relish. ‘Didn’t you read it?’

    ‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘My mama would never vanish. My father wouldn’t let it happen.’

    ‘She vanished six weeks after you were born. Policemen from three states were looking for her! There’s a reward too. It’s never been claimed. Mama says that’s why our family doesn’t meet yours. Your father might be a murderer. And he makes corned beef.’

    Sophie gave him a sharp kick under the damask tablecloth. He winced. She moved her legs so his retaliation missed.

    ‘My papa is the most wonderful man in the world! Everyone wants to meet my papa!’

    ‘Not my family.’ Malcolm glanced at his governess. ‘My mother is going to be cross when I tell her Miss Wilson made me sit with you. But Miss Wilson is leaving at the end of the month, so maybe she thinks it doesn’t matter that you are Not Acceptable.’

    It was a lie. It all had to be lies. Mama was an angel in heaven and Papa was the best man in New South Wales. Sophie narrowed her eyes. She couldn’t pinch Malcolm, not in public.

    ‘If it wasn’t your father, then maybe white slavers took your mama and —’

    ‘Malcolm!’ The Encroacher seemed to suddenly notice her charge. ‘What have you been saying?’

    Sophie stood up. ‘Silly things,’ she said. ‘We need to go now, don’t we, Miss Thwaites?’

    ‘Indeed we do,’ said Miss Thwaites. She stood too, and bowed slightly. ‘How nice to meet you, Miss Wilson.’

    ‘We must meet again,’ said the Encroacher, desperately. ‘I … I will be seeking a new situation soon. I wondered … perhaps tea next week?’

    ‘We will be out of town next week,’ said Miss Thwaites coolly. ‘May I recommend Miss Sorrel’s Agency? It is in Macquarie Street. Come along, Sophie.’

    The boy smirked. He knows that there’s nothing I can do about his lies, thought Sophie. For they had to be lies, surely.

    One day she’d get even.

    Chapter 3

    Is there any such thing really as a happy childhood? Children must be taught to be who they are expected to be — which is usually very different from who they are. Childhood is a time of moulding. Adults only pretend that it is pleasant.

    Miss Lily, 1913

    FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

    Darkness clung around the ruins of the farmhouse. The guns thrummed in the distance, but there had been no shots from the sheds nearby for the last ten minutes. The dog seemed asleep.

    Were all the soldiers in both patrols dead?

    No. Waiting.

    Sophie should be terrified — for herself, for the men who would suffer unimaginable horror if she were to fail.

    No, not unimaginable. She had seen too much not to imagine it all.

    But she didn’t feel terrified. Instead she felt alive, as though the last shell of Sophie Higgs from Australia had cracked and fallen away. The only rules in this landscape of burned trees and shattered farms were those of war.

    She was free. A chuckle rose, impossible to suppress.

    ‘What’s so funny?’

    She wished she could tell him there was no need to hide his terror. But that was another rule: men were brave, and soldiers were braver. ‘Rules. The ones we never speak about. Even when I was small I knew there were rules ladies had to obey but never talk about. Men too.’

    ‘I obey army regulations because I have to,’ he said stiffly.

    ‘And you think army regulations are the only rules you obey without question? Would you stab the Kaiser?’

    ‘What?’

    ‘If he were here now. And if you had a bayonet. Would you stab him?’

    ‘Of course not.’

    ‘You see? You’d end the war if you did. But it would be unsporting. Not following the rules.’

    ‘This isn’t a game of football.’

    ‘Isn’t it? It’s just bigger. Anguish instead of bruises. But still the same stupid rules.’

    He sighed. ‘Go on with your story. I don’t know what to ask about first. Did your mother really vanish?’

    ‘She vanished when I was six weeks old,’ said Sophie flatly. ‘I found the article in Dad’s desk in the library. Cuttings from other newspapers too.’

    ‘People don’t just vanish. Were her clothes there?’

    Sophie looked at him in the dimness. ‘People vanish every day. Thousands of them. Don’t you read the papers? Missing in action …’

    ‘But that wasn’t wartime.’

    ‘No. And, yes, her clothes were there. Her jewellery. Nothing taken, except the nightdress she’d been wearing.’

    ‘She can’t have gone far in that. The servants saw nothing?’

    Sophie shrugged. ‘If they did, they didn’t tell.’

    ‘And there was never any clue? What about her family?’

    ‘My mother was an orphan. English. She’d come to Australia via India as a governess. My father had a thing for governesses. Still has, I believe.’

    ‘Miss Thwaites?’

    Sophie smiled. ‘Miss Thwaites spends every Sunday afternoon with him. I was fifteen before I realised.’

    ‘You said she had a face like a cow!’

    ‘She did. Does. But a friendly cow.’

    ‘But your father …’

    ‘My father is rich enough to have a beautiful mistress?’ She frowned. ‘I think that beauty intimidates Dad. Or maybe it reminds him of my mother. Anyway, as far back as I can remember, he and Miss Thwaites were close. We’d all play with the model trains at Thuringa. Dad loves model trains; he’s got one whole room filled with them. Miss Thwaites and Dad share the controls. They never shared a bedroom though, even at Thuringa.’

    ‘One doesn’t marry a governess.’

    She smiled. ‘You forget — he already has married one. But he can’t marry anyone now. Not unless my mother is declared dead.’

    ‘I admit I … I’ve never thought about that sort of thing.’

    ‘Why should you? The next of kin has to apply to have someone who is missing declared dead. My father never has.’

    ‘Why not?’

    ‘In case of more gossip, I suppose. Raking it all up again. Maybe he’s always hoped that she might still be alive. I don’t know.’

    ‘Sophie …’ He hesitated. ‘It must have occurred to you …’

    ‘That my father might have killed my mother? Other people thought so. He could have bribed the maids to assist, the coachman to take her body. Men as rich as Dad can buy many things. But I know he didn’t kill my mother.’

    ‘Because you love him?’ His voice was gentler now. Good, she thought. The terror seemed to be easing from his body.

    ‘I suppose I do. But I know he didn’t do it.’

    ‘Why? How can you be so sure?’

    ‘Because I asked him,’ said Sophie.

    Chapter 4

    Some men want children desperately, often those who don’t like children much. To men like that, a child is an extension of who they are. Sometimes I wonder if they ever truly see their child at all.

    Miss Lily, 1913

    SYDNEY, 1902

    Sophie let Nanny Jenkins change her clothes after the tearoom visit, then obediently lay on the bed for half an hour with The Girl’s Own Annual stories Miss Thwaites had sent from England. But today even the adventures of two schoolgirls in ancient Egypt could not grab her.

    Why had her father lied?

    She let Nanny bathe her, then changed once more to dine with Miss Thwaites on chicken salad and strawberry jelly, a meal that would shock the mothers of the Suitables, who fed their children mince and tapioca, the tasteless mush deemed proper for a child.

    At last it was time to see her father. Mr Jeremiah Higgs dined by himself each night in the library, not in the dining room with its table that sat forty, used only on the few occasions he had guests. Miss Thwaites would always act as hostess on such occasions, even though she was just a governess; the fact that she was the daughter of an honourable made it different.

    Sophie’s father didn’t believe in cutlery, except in company, which was one of the reasons why he preferred to eat alone. Fingers before forks, he said. Sophie assumed for years that this was because he was from New Zealand — that New Zealanders, for some reason, avoided cutlery. Only a careful study of Cousin Oswald’s use of knife and fork convinced her otherwise.

    Mr Jeremiah Higgs’s lunch was a slab of bread and cheese at his desk at the factory or in the library on Sunday — the only day of the week he didn’t work — with a slice of apple pie and still more cheese, every day of his life. (A pie without cheese is like a kiss without whiskers, he’d said once, while stroking his moustache.)

    Dinner was served when he felt like it, and ‘no palaver about it’, in his armchair facing the library fire in winter, or the vase of gum leaves that occupied the fireplace in summer.

    Till she was five, Sophie had imagined he ate the same meals as she and Miss Thwaites: lamb cutlets, roast chicken or squab with baked potatoes. But one night she had interrupted his meal to show him the pen wiper she had finished (finally) for the church fair.

    It was as close to guilty as she had ever seen him look. She’d found him with his pocket knife in one hand and a slab of roast beef in the other, slicing off bits to put on the bread on his lap. A bowl of mustard sat on the table within easy reach.

    Sophie and Miss Thwaites ate dinner at five o’clock, with milk from their own cows out at Thuringa, for her father didn’t trust town milk: the dairymen added chalk dust to make it thick and white, he said. Sophie was allowed to see her father only at six o’clock, for an hour in the library, after he had changed from the clothes he wore to the factory, and both of them had bathed — as though we have washed away everything we have done during the day, thought Sophie. For her father, she wondered if it was to wash away the smell of corned beef.

    Today she had changed into the loose white cotton gown suitable for a girl to wear to see her father after work. She wore a pink sash, and pink ribbons too, even though she hated ribbons flapping at her cheeks, but because her father liked her to wear ribbons. And she loved him.

    ‘Good evening, Papa.’

    He smiled at her from his armchair and held out his arms. They were short arms. Sometimes her father reminded her of an ant: a bull ant, in charge of all the other ants. The top of his head reached only to Miss Thwaites’s shoulders. ‘And how’s my princess today?’

    Jeremiah Higgs had never tried to turn his New Zealand accent into mock upper-class English, as most wealthy Australians did. Sophie was glad. Papa wouldn’t have been Papa if he spoke in any other way, though Miss Thwaites ensured that Sophie’s own accent was impeccable.

    Sophie willingly participated in tonight’s hug. Her father wasn’t good at hugging, but she knew he liked it and so did she. He was older than other fathers, his hair white at the temples and sideburns, which made him special. He had told her once he’d decided not to have a wife or child until he could ‘do right by them’, which meant a big house and money.

    She sat on the stool by his feet. The brocade didn’t match the green velvet curtains or the dark wood of the library. It had pink roses on it and golden tassels. Papa never put his feet on this stool. It was hers.

    ‘I can do long division now.’ Miss Thwaites had snorted, just like a cow, when one of the Suitables’ mothers had said that mathematics stunted girls’ bodies and made them unfit for motherhood.

    ‘What about your piano practice?’

    ‘I don’t like piano,’ said Sophie.

    ‘All ladies play the piano.’

    Sophie considered. ‘I won’t,’ she said.

    He stroked her hair. He was better at hair-stroking than hugging. ‘You’ll be the finest lady in Sydney.’

    ‘Then I won’t need to play the piano. Piano playing is … repulsive.’

    ‘Is that your new word?’

    Sophie nodded. ‘It’s a good word. We went to the Tearooms and met a boy. He’s repulsive too.’

    ‘Why’s he repulsive?’

    ‘Because he said a stupid thing. He said Mama vanished.’

    Her father became still.

    She watched him. ‘You said Mama had died.’

    He chose his words with care. ‘That was easiest for a little girl to understand.’

    ‘Then she did vanish?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘Why didn’t you find her then?’ Sophie’s voice was fierce. Her mother was hers. She’d have felt as protective of a lost doll.

    ‘Sophie love …’ Papa’s accent changed when he called her that. ‘Have I ever failed to give you what you’ve asked for?’

    ‘Yes. I want a proper horse, not just a pony,’ said Sophie promptly.

    ‘You’ll get that horse when you’re fourteen years old. What else?’

    Sophie pondered. There had been Rufus, who had died. But dogs did die when they got old; Papa had explained that. She wasn’t allowed to play with sail boats in the fountain either, because girls didn’t; nor was she allowed to have bare feet like all the boys around Thuringa. Even Papa wasn’t able to change the rules set down for ladies.

    ‘No,’ she said at last, cautiously, not wanting to give him too much credit. If he usually gave her what she wanted, sometimes it took a lot of arguing to convince him not to give her things she didn’t want, like piano lessons and cod liver oil.

    ‘If I could have given your mother back, don’t you think I would have?’

    He was speaking the truth. Sophie always had a pretty good idea if someone was speaking the truth.

    ‘Why did she go?’

    Her father hesitated. That means he is wondering how much more to tell me, she thought.

    The thought didn’t anger her. Adults usually considered what bits they should tell children.

    ‘I can’t tell you why she left, Sophie.’

    ‘Did … didn’t she like me?’

    He smiled at that. ‘Everyone loves you, Sophie.’

    That wasn’t true, but he probably thought it was.

    ‘Was it because of corned beef?’

    ‘It was not. She knew about that when she married me.’

    Sophie took a breath. ‘Was it because you don’t have a leg?’

    He stopped breathing for a few seconds. ‘Who told you about my leg?’

    ‘No one.’ She wished she could swallow back the words.

    ‘Then how’d you know?’

    ‘I went into your room when you had the influenza last year. Miss Thwaites wouldn’t let me in, in case I caught it, but I wanted to see if you were all right. You were sleeping.’ He sat there watching her. ‘It was by your bed. It looked like a leg, but with straps on. And I could only see one foot under the bedclothes.’

    He still looked at her, considering. ‘Yes, I’ve a wooden leg. Lost my real one in the wars on the Indian North West Frontier when I was a soldier. But your mother knew that when she married me too.’

    ‘How did she go missing?’

    ‘You want a story then?’

    ‘Yes,’ said Sophie. Sometimes Papa told stories of when he was a little boy back in New Zealand, of how Greymouth was grey, just like its name, and he’d been so poor he’d warmed his feet in fresh cow droppings. Other times he described how he’d seen Thuringa after it rained and looked green and lush, then when it dried out he’d thought that it was ugly till one day he saw the golden hills and fell in love with it again.

    ‘This one’s not a nice story, Sophie love.’

    She shrugged. She liked stories in which heroes ripped off giants’ heads better than nice ones. ‘Tell me.’

    ‘All right then. Your mama was sleeping down the hall, recovering after your birth. I went down to breakfast that day and asked the maid how her mistress had slept. The fool said she’d taken her dinner and breakfast up, and when she wasn’t in the bedroom either time, nor the bed slept in, she’d just brought the tray down again — eaten it herself, most likely. She said she thought your mother might have spent the night with me. But she hadn’t. I ran up the stairs …’

    ‘And then?’

    ‘I searched. The police searched. I hired men to search. There’s still a grand reward for finding her.’

    ‘Papa … did someone kill her?’

    ‘I don’t see why they would,’ he said heavily. ‘She were … she was a girl everyone liked. No one’d want to kill her. How could they, in her own house, with servants downstairs?’

    There was something he wasn’t saying. ‘Was she kidnapped by pirates, to pay a ransom, like in Treasure Island?’

    ‘I’d have paid it,’ he said gently. ‘No one ever asked.’

    ‘White slavers?’

    She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to know what white slavers were. But he just said, ‘White slavers take girls who don’t have families to care for ’em. Nay, Sophie love. Whatever happened, it weren’t that.’

    ‘Then what could have happened?’

    I should be crying now, thought Sophie. That’s what a heroine in The Girl’s Own Annual would be doing. But she just felt a dawning excitement.

    Other girls had mothers. She had a mystery …

    ‘I wish I had an answer for you,’ he said.

    She thought for a moment. ‘Papa?’

    ‘Yes?’ he asked, a little warily.

    ‘Can I see your wooden leg now?’

    He laughed, his face breaking up into a hundred tiny wrinkles. She could see his worn-down bottom teeth, all yellow. ‘Yes.’ He reached down and pulled up a trouser leg.

    She looked at it, disappointed. It still looked just like a round of wood, vanishing into his sock just like a real leg would.

    He hesitated, then pulled his trouser leg up further. The knee was more interesting, hinged like the legs of one of her dolls.

    ‘Is it heavy?’

    He let the trouser leg fall. He was smiling. ‘No more than a real leg. You get used to it.’

    ‘What was the war like?’

    ‘Now you’re just trying to keep me talking instead of going to bed.’

    ‘No, I want to know. Were you a hero?’

    A hero would make up for corned beef.

    ‘No. I was just there. It was hot and dusty, then it was freezing and dusty. Too many were killed and even more wished they had been. War isn’t a good story, Princess. You don’t talk about wars, not when you come home.’

    He touched her cheek. He had never done that before. ‘Sophie love, if you ever hear gossip about me, about our family, come to me about it, as you have tonight. You promise?’

    ‘I promise.’

    He kissed her on the forehead then, which was her signal to go to bed.

    Almost by magic — or as if she’d been listening — Miss Thwaites arrived to take her upstairs. Sophie heard the library door shut behind her.

    One day she would find out. Maybe not soon — she was realistic about how much she could hunt for a missing mother with Miss Thwaites as her constant shepherd, not to mention piano lessons she still had to convince her father she didn’t need. But one day she would find out what had happened to her mother.

    Chapter 5

    To some men an opinion from a woman is like mustard on their egg: unthinkable. For others it can be opening a window to let clean air into a crowded and stuffy drawing room.

    Miss Lily, 1913

    FLANDERS, 12 JULY 1917

    The dog drooled gently on Sophie’s lap. ‘What sort of dog is it, do you think?’ she asked.

    ‘Sheepdog, I think.’

    ‘What? I’ve known sheepdogs all my life. This one is bigger than a sheep.’

    ‘A Spanish sheepdog.’

    She ruffled her hands through the woolly fur. ‘What on earth are Spanish sheep like then?’

    He ignored the question. ‘Which regiment was your father in?’

    ‘Only a man would want to know that. I never asked. My father came out to Australia after his time in the army, because Australia has more cattle to be turned into corned beef than New Zealand has, and more people to sell it to and ships to export it in. That’s all he’s ever told me.’

    Gunfire suddenly rattled from what had been the barn. A man called out, a warning perhaps. The dog’s ears twitched.

    ‘German,’ said Sophie.

    ‘You speak German?’ The suspicion was back in his voice.

    ‘Only enough to recognise it. Could we make it to the car?’

    ‘No. Both sides will be watching it. Both probably want it.’

    ‘We could run away in the darkness then …’ She paused. ‘No. We need the car too.’

    He didn’t disagree. Another shot cracked from behind them almost at the same time as the first volleys of gunfire crumbled more of the wall in front. ‘Stalemate,’ he said. ‘Neither side dares move in case the other sees them.’

    ‘So what happens now?’

    ‘They’ll try to take each other by surprise. Or if there’s an officer he may order some of the men to advance and take out the other side, even if it means the poor duffers die in the attempt.’

    ‘We might get to the car while they’re fighting each other.’

    ‘And we might get shot if we try. We can only wait, Sophie. That’s what war is mostly about. Waiting to die.’

    ‘You think we’re going to die?’

    ‘I’ve known I’m going to die in this war for the last two years. It’s a case of when, not if. But a girl like you shouldn’t even be thinking about death.’

    Sophie was glad it was too dim for him to see her face.

    ‘Let’s talk of something else,’ he went on. ‘So, did you ever find out about your mother?’

    ‘A little, over the next couple of years. My father moved house six months after she vanished, I suppose to get away from people who pointed and said, That’s the house where that woman disappeared. We moved again, a few years after that, to

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