IN THE HALF HOUR before lights-out, after cocoa, the girls would be in and out of each other’s rooms, sitting on their beds writing letters home, or to sweethearts. Some still cried a little from homesickness, and there would be much comforting going on at this time, with arms around shoulders and soothing words. It seemed theatrical to Briony, and ridiculous, grown young women tearful for their mothers, or as one of the students put it through her sobs, for the smell of Daddy’s pipe. Those doing the consoling seemed to be enjoying themselves rather too much. In this cloying atmosphere Briony sometimes wrote her own concise letters home which conveyed little more than that she was not ill, not unhappy, not in need of her allowance and not about to change her mind in the way that her mother had predicted. Other girls proudly wrote out their exacting routines of work and study to astound their loving parents. Briony confided these matters only to her notebook, and even then, in no great detail. She did not want her mother to know about the lowly work she did. Part of the purpose of becoming a nurse was to work for her independence. It was important to her that her parents, especially her mother, knew as little about her life as possible.

Apart from a string of repeated questions which remained unanswered, Emily’s letters were mostly about the evacuees. Three mothers with seven children, all from the Hackney area of London, had been billeted on the Tallis family. One of the mothers had disgraced herself in the village pub and was now banned. Another woman was a devout Catholic who walked four miles with her three children to the local town for mass on Sunday. But Betty, a Catholic herself, was not sensitive to these differences. She hated all the mothers and all their children. They told her on the first morning that they did not like her food. She claimed to have seen the churchgoer spitting on the hallway floor. The oldest of the children, a thirteen-year-old boy who looked no bigger than eight, had got into the fountain, climbed onto the statue and snapped off the Triton’s horn and his arm, right down to the elbow. Jack said that it could be fixed without too much trouble. But now the part, which had been carried into the house and left in the scullery, was missing. On information from old Hardman, Betty accused the boy of throwing it in the lake. The boy said he knew nothing. There was talk of draining the lake, but there was concern for the pair of mating swans. The mother was fierce in her son’s defense, saying that it was dangerous to have a fountain when children were about, and that she was writing to the M.P. Sir Arthur Ridley was Briony’s godfather.

Still, Emily thought they should consider themselves lucky to have evacuees because at one point it had looked like the whole house was going to be requisitioned for use by the army. They settled instead on Hugh van Vliet’s place because it had a snooker table. Her other news was that her sister Hermione was still in Paris but thinking of relocating to Nice, and the cows had been moved into three fields on the north side so that the park could be plowed up for corn. A mile and a half of iron fencing dating from the 1750s had been taken away to be melted down to make Spitfires. Even the workmen who removed it said it was the wrong kind of metal. A cement and brick pillbox had been built down by the river, right on the bend, among the sedges, destroying the nests of the teal and the gray wagtails. Another pillbox was being built where the main road entered the village. They were storing all the fragile pieces in the cellars, including the harpsichord. Wretched Betty dropped Uncle Clem’s vase carrying it down and it shattered on the steps. She said the pieces had simply come away in her hand, but that was hardly to be believed. Danny Hardman had joined the navy, but all the other boys in the village had gone into the East Surreys. Jack was working far too hard. He attended a special conference and when he came back he looked tired and thin, and wasn’t allowed to tell her where he had been. He was furious about the vase and actually shouted at Betty, which was so unlike him. On top of it all, she had lost a ration book and they had to do without sugar for two weeks. The mother who was banned from the Red Lion had come without her gas mask and no replacement was to be had. The ARP warden, who was P.C. Vockins’s brother, had been round a third time for a blackout inspection. He was turning out to be quite a little dictator. No one liked him.

Reading these letters at the end of an exhausting day, Briony felt a dreamy nostalgia, a vague yearning for a long-lost life. She could hardly feel sorry for herself. She was the one who had cut herself off from home. In the week’s holiday after preliminary training, before the probationer year began, she had stayed with her uncle and aunt in Primrose Hill and had resisted her mother on the telephone. Why could Briony not visit, even for a day, when everyone would adore to see her and was desperate for her stories about her new life? And why did she write so infrequently? It was difficult to give a straight answer. For now it was necessary to stay away.

In the drawer of her bedside locker, she kept a foolscap notebook with marbled cardboard covers. Taped............