44. April 26, 1928 London, England
London has evolved over the years, adapted and survived alongside Beatrix.
Sometimes she fears every detail she knows will fade—change—until it becomes a stranger to her again.
But this grander, more modern version is still loud, still dirty, and, for now at least, she can still find her city in it.
For the first time in her life, Beatrix rents her own place, a proper apartment on the third floor of a stone building that was built around the same time as the Crystal Palace. The windows are drafty and the wallpaper is peeling, but for a little while, it is all hers.
She could invite Oliver to her home for one of his visits. She could cook him dinner, and they could push the furniture against the walls and dance in her sitting room. She could even have friends over for tea, if she had any.
The bell over the door of Levens isn’t too much for Anna to want now.
She still doesn’t understand why the world thinks it is, even after all this time.
Beatrix sits up. Dandelions speckle the grass around her. She picks one, keeps the stem long. She picks another and another, until she has a lap full of the wild yellow flowers.
“You’ll stain your trousers,” Anna says.
Beatrix laughs. “You sound like my mother.” She takes two dandelions and crosses one stem over the other, keeping the yellow heads close together. She twists the bottom stem up and around, pulls it down between the two flowers. She takes another dandelion from her lap and does the same.
Anna sits up. “What are you doing?”
“Making a crown.”
“Why?”
Beatrix shrugs. “Because I haven’t made one in ages.”
She feels the weight of Anna’s gaze as she works, wrapping the stems, weaving them into a chain.
She offers Anna two flowers from the pile in her lap.
She takes them, and Beatrix shows her how to start.
“Cross them like this,” she says, holding the stems perpendicular.
“Then loop this one up and over and through.” Slowly but surely, Anna gets the hang of it.
The pile of flowers dwindles to nothing.
Beatrix shows Anna how to knot their chains into crowns. She perches hers over Anna’s windswept hair and leans back on her hands to admire her handiwork.
She wonders how she hasn’t seen it before. The way Anna’s eyes crinkle at the corners, how one side of her mouth tilts higher when she smiles, just like her own. The faintest freckles on the bridge of her typically well-powdered nose that remind her of William.
“Well?” Anna asks. “What do you think?”
Beatrix grins. “It suits you.”
Anna takes her own crown and places it on Beatrix’s bobbed hair. She grimaces. “It’s a bit wonky.”
“It’s perfect,” Beatrix assures her.
The sun sinks toward the horizon. Anna stands and stretches. She pulls Beatrix to her feet. “Next time we’ll come earlier and go deeper into the forest,” she says. “If you sit like a statue under the trees, the black fallow deer will wander right past you.”
“That sounds lovely,” Beatrix says.
She doesn’t realize she has made plans with Anna until she has.