37. August 5, 1914 Great Yarmouth, England
Time moves on and on and on.
Beatrix tries to. She throws herself into her search for answers, collects odd jobs as she crisscrosses the isle.
She visits the places Professor Winfield wrote about in his letters, every wood or field or standing stone she can remember.
But she can’t ignore the ache in her chest. Can’t shake her melancholy.
Can’t forget Oliver. And that simply won’t do.
She packs her life into her small leather case. She takes the next train out of London, doesn’t even care where it is headed, as long as it is far away from her old city and her old memories and all her old lives. She needs a fresh start.
The train takes her up the east coast. She decides on Great Yarmouth, a seaside town that is a popular escape from the daily drudgeries of life.
She takes comfort in the ancient town walls—even older than she is—still standing and watching the tides come and go in their steady, predictable way.
She spends her evenings walking alone on the beach for miles after her shift at the Royal Hotel, barefoot in the sand.
But the rest of the world is restless.
Every morning, the pit in her stomach grows as she reads the front page of the newspapers tucked neatly onto the hotel guests’ breakfast trays.
Austria at war.
Serbia at war.
Germany at war.
France at war.
Belgium at war.
One unremarkable morning, late in the summer, Beatrix ties on her apron and heads to the dining room. The sea outside the windows is calm, the sky cloudless, the day already promising to be warm. She picks up a discarded breakfast tray and her gaze snags on another bold headline.
The tray slips from her grasp, and the plates and glasses clatter against one another. Dregs of cold tea spill over the words that have stopped her heart.
Great Britain at war.