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I snap my jaw tight and lift my chin. I refuse to concede defeat. “Of course, but I don’t have that one in stock.”

He sits back. “Have you seen Young and Innocent? Hitchcock’s adaptation of the book? It came out years ago, but it’s playing at the cinema in Chipping Norton starting this Thursday.”

Not sure how to answer, afraid his question is attached to the game we just played rather than an invitation, I say nothing. Because while I feel tongue-tied and flustered, I oddly also feel more alive, tingly, alert, and even pretty, as silly as that sounds, when I’m near Charlie. I want to believe he’s asking me to the cinema. But as he sits quietly beside me, I begin to wonder.

He quirks a small half smile. “I’m asking you for an evening out, Gemma, to dinner and the cinema. Did you not catch that? Was I too subtle?”

His smile broadens as I take him in, from blond hair darkening in the evening light, to blue-grey eyes that alter to almost purple reflecting the sky above, to that dimple only in his left cheek.

“In case I was, will you please go to dinner and the cinema with me this Saturday evening?”

“Yes.” The word comes out faster, louder, and more definitively than I mean to say it, but not more than I actually mean it.

I’ve been asked out before, but by boys. And some of them not very good boys either. Not one of them ever held my eyes and declared his intentions quite so clearly, then held my gaze after he asked and I answered, as if the moment and my reply are things to savor. There was usually a shuffling of feet, darting glances here, there, and everywhere, a cocky chin lift at the “yes,” and a tossed “Saturday night then?” thrown in at the last moment. Charlie’s invitation, however, has my toes curling in my low-heeled shoes.

He looks behind us towards the police station. “I have to go now. But I’ll be at the store’s back door at six o’clock Saturday. That’s the door up to your rooms, right? Where I walked you home last week?”

“Yes. Just there. I’ll be ready. Six o’clock.”

And once more, I’m grinning so much my cheeks hurt.

Chapter 9

Friday, 13 January 1950

I stand outside the Beurtons’ front door a jangle of nerves. It’s been three days since I asked Mrs. Beurton to give me baking lessons. Three days since I felt that glimmer of excitement—only briefly dampened by Peggy implying the whole idea was a mere joke.

But it isn’t. At least not to me. Something about Mrs. Beurton makes me think there’s more here than just baking, more than my idea of me, if that makes any sense. Perhaps I’m simply reacting to the most dynamic opposite I’ve ever met to my own mother, but it’s like she’s opened a door—a door beyond the picturesque idyllic life offered on the pages of a magazine, beyond simply wanting a room of one’s own. She’s chaos, color, intelligence, and dynamism. Energy, vitality, and determination. She’s generous—she agreed to teach me after all—and welcoming.

I reach for the knocker, take a deep breath, and let it fall. It strikes the plate with the solid, resounding clunk of forged metal on metal, and this time I remember to let it go.

The door swings open, and Mrs. Beurton stands smiling. “I wondered how long it would take you to knock.”

My laugh comes out on an uneasy hiccup. “I began to wonder myself.”

“Why?”

I notice I can’t see her pupils in the center of her dark, almost coal-black eyes, and I shrug to give myself time. Yet I still can’t find an answer. “I don’t know.”

Her eyes sparkle. “Life gets so much easier when you know your why.” She steps back. “Come in.”

I step into the hallway and am captured by a warm, wonderful scent. “Did you bake scones?”

At her outstretched hands I shrug out of my coat and hand it to her. She holds it as a thunderous pounding pulls our attention to the stairs.

“Slowly,” she calls out.

A girl—Nina, if I remember correctly—with amber hair and dark eyes stops halfway down the stairs, then proceeds more slowly. The young boy, Peter, whom I met at the store, bumps into his sister, then follows her.

“Better.” Mrs. Beurton brushes the girl’s bangs off her forehead and lays a light kiss there.

“Nina, please say hello to Miss Brown. She and I are baking shortbread today.”

“Will you save me some?”

“Of course. I always save your favorite for you.” She surveys the room. “Where’s your schoolbag?”

This question is met with a look of complete confusion before Nina dashes off. Peter, on the other hand, grabs his coat out of the front closet. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”