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was like heaven on a damp Irish morning.
    Gran was clattering dishes and pans around and looked upset.
    ‘Where’s my dad?’
    The question was heard by her grandfather as he came in from outside bringing a mist of dampness with him.
    ‘Gone!’
    His boots clumped on the scrubbed flagstones as he made a move to wash his hands before breakfast.
    Venetia, her dark eyes filling with fear for what she was about to hear, stood with her mouth open.
    ‘Is he coming back?’ she asked.
    Dermot Brodie wasn’t listening. He was shaking a finger in front of his wife’s face as she dished up his bacon and eggs, and shouting at the top of his voice.
    ‘Didn’t I tell you so? Didn’t I?’
    Venetia felt her legs go weak.
    Her grandmother saw her and cast anxious eyes at her husband.
    ‘Have a care for the child, Dermot. She’s been through enough, losing her mother and all that.’
    Dermot Brodie straightened and looked at Venetia.
    ‘Your father lied to me, girl. His own father. He never meant to stay. He’s always gone his own way and he’s no different now than he’s ever been. Your father’s gone back to sea. You might see him again, or you might not. Either way it looks as though we’re stuck with the pair of you!’

Chapter Three
Magda
    Magda Brodie watched as her aunt locked the front door behind her. She was off to the pub – to see her friend, as she put it.
    Magda sighed. Her world had become very small seen only via the small windows at the front of the house.
    She had a good view of the grander house across the way where gentlemen callers arrived by taxi or chauffeur-driven car and mostly at night. Only a few came on foot and then furtively, their coat collars turned up as though reluctant to be recognised.
    Sometimes one of the girls living across the road would see her looking out and would wave to her. She would wave back, the small action raising her spirits.
    Sometimes she would see one of the girls talking to an old woman who limped. She saw their eyes stray across to her and knew she was the subject of their conversation.
    On these occasions she shrank back into the gloomy room, fearful lest they tell her aunt that she spent time between chores gazing out at a world that she was forbidden to join.
    There were no books in Aunt Bridget’s sorry abode, except for the Bible kept enticingly high above her head. Magdamissed the books she’d once read. They had been borrowed from an old man who kept a second-hand shop on the Fulham Road. His main merchandise had been second-hand furniture. He’d lent her those books in part exchange for her mother’s sewing box.
    ‘But only to lend,’ he’d said to her. ‘Might have a paying customer with a library one day.’
    She’d loved those books; fairy stories and adventures, books full of magic, beautiful princesses and honourable princes. And there were always bad fairies and witches, though none of them frightened her, not like her Aunt Bridget.
    In the absence of books, she made up stories about the young women in the house across the road, the old lady, the gentlemen callers.
    The girls were captive princesses, all waiting for the right prince to answer the right riddle. So far none of the gentlemen callers had answered the riddle correctly, which was why all the princesses were still there, none of them leaving on a white horse with their favoured Prince Charming.
    As for the witch, well, there was no doubt who that was and she herself was the most beautiful captive princess of all, subject of a wicked curse and sealed in a cold dark prison.
    Spring came and the weather turned warmer. The girls opposite were wearing prettier dresses of all different colours. They looked like butterflies. Sometimes they looked very happy. Sometimes they looked sad or tired of the world at large, but at least they were free to come and go, Magda thought, and for a while she envied them.
    It was a sunny morning, a fresh breeze blowing dust and paper along the street, when