Summary

Part 2, Chapter 18 is set in the summer of 1940. Juliet fled to Birchwood Manor with her children — Beatrice, Freddy, and Tip — because their home in London had been destroyed by a bomb. Mrs. Hammett, who worked at the Swan, a hotel and restaurant in Birchwood where Juliet and her husband had spent their honeymoon, had given the family a welcome basket of food and an invitation to eat dinner at the Swan on Friday. Beatrice was excited at the prospect of seeing the hotel where her parents spent their honeymoon.

When the children were finally asleep, Juliet took a bottle of whiskey with her to the backyard. She wondered what Alan, fighting in France, would think about the place she and the children were living. The last letter she had gotten from him had been central in her decision to move to the...