About the Author

Karen Wallace is the author of more than ninety books, including the novel Raspberries on the Yangtze and the picture books I Am a Tyrannosaurus and Think of an Eel. Karen also writes for children¹s television. She lives with her husband, novelist Sam Llewellyn; two sons, Will and Martin; and two Maine Coon cats, Cougar and Dave, in England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

'Your pa's fair posh,' said the butcher's boy to Wendy Darling when he saw her in the kitchen. He banged down a wide, flat box on the table. 'All the way from France, these are.' He looked sideways at Wendy's thick golden hair and her big, black-lashed blue eyes. You'll break some hearts one day, young miss.

'On your way, Eddie,' said Mrs Jenkins, the cook, firmly. 'And don't forget my sausages tomorrow. There'll be a cup of tea for you if they're fresh.'

Eddie grinned and left the kitchen. That Mrs Jenkins, she had eyes in the back of her head.

Mrs Jenkins turned to the box on the table. 'Baby chickens!' she said in a disgusted voice. 'No taste to 'em at all! What's wrong with a good English cockerel straight from the farmyard?'

Wendy opened the box and saw twenty-four tiny feathered bodies lying side by side, packed in newspaper. She picked one up. Its bones were fine as hairpins and its floppy neck was thinner than her finger. Mrs Jenkins was right. What was the point of them? Each bird seemed barely bigger than a mouthful. 'Can I help you pluck them, Mrs Jenkins?'

'If you put your apron on, dear.'

An hour later, Wendy watched as Mrs Jenkins seasoned the tiny chickens with thyme and wrapped them in fat bacon. 'There's not many knows how to keep 'em juicy,' she said to herself proudly, banging a body into the roasting pan. 'New-fangled nonsense!'

'Putrefaction,' said Wendy sternly.

'Yes, dear.' Mrs Jenkins was used to Wendy saying strange things. The girl was only nine but she often seemed more grown up than her age. She spent half her time with her head in a book and the other half grubbing about in the garden with her magnifying glass.

'It means rot.'

Last summer, Wendy had wrapped a dead blackbird in greased muslin and buried it for a month, then dug it up and looked at it through the magnifying glass. Her brother John had been sick.

'It's what happens to dead things,' said Wendy to Mrs Jenkins. She drew her eyebrows together. 'Do you think these baby chickens have maggots inside? Extra wriggly French maggots?'

'I doubt your father would thank me for serving rotten meat.' Mrs Jenkins rolled her eyes. 'These birds cost a pretty penny, I can tell you.'

Wendy clicked her tongue. It would be just like her father to show off. He always had to have the latest thing. Then he had to make sure that everyone knew how clever he was.

'I think it's a terrible waste of money, Mrs Jenkins. Why can't Father's friends eat pigeon pie like we do? Then he could give the money he saved to the poor families who need it.'

By now all of the little birds were seasoned and wrapped in bacon. 'It's that Lady Cunningham,' said Mrs Jenkins in a flat voice. 'She and Sir Alfred are coming to the dinner this evening. Your father thinks she likes foreign food.' Mrs Jenkins picked up a chicken and jabbed the sharp end of a skewer in one end and out the other.

'Why are you stabbing them?' asked Wendy. She looked at Mrs Jenkins sideways. 'It's not their fault they're French.'

'I'm not stabbing them.' Mrs Jenkins laughed. 'It's the heat from the skewer that cooks them fast and keeps them juicy.'

'First they're strangled, then they're stabbed,' said Wendy. 'I'm glad I'm not French.'

'I expect your mother and father are too, dear.'

Mrs Jenkins slid the last two bodies onto their skewer and fitted them into the roasting pan. Wendy swung a wooden spoon back and forth in front of her face like a metronome. She stared at the huge Welsh dresser on the far side of the kitchen. Its shelves were stacked with china mixing bowls and metal moulds for jelly and baking tins for Mrs Jenkins's superb cakes. Underneath the shelves, copper-bottomed saucepans hung in a row according to size.

'Do you think the big preserving pan would sound like a drum and the tiny pot like a triangle if I hit them with this spoon?'

'I couldn't rightly say, dear,' said Mrs Jenkins, not really listening.

Wendy stared down at the row of wrapped bodies stuck with skewers.

'If God lets this happen to little birds, why shouldn't it happen to children? It says in the Bible -'

'Wendy!' snapped Mrs Jenkins. 'For goodness' sake, stop asking silly questions or I'll ruin these birds and your mother will have my guts for garters.'

'I'm sorry.'

Mrs Jenkins wished she hadn't spoken so sharply. She knew perfectly well that Wendy had hardly anyone to talk to besides her brother John, and even though he was seven, he seemed much younger. As for their nanny - well, Mrs Jenkins was convinced that women like Edwina Holborn should be dragged out at dawn and shot.

'Nothing to be sorry about,' said Mrs Jenkins in a kinder voice. 'But there's a time and place for everything.' She held out a white napkin folded into a parcel. 'Now, here's a treat for you. They're your mama's favourite and I made them specially.'

'Is it new-fangled foreign food?'

Mrs Jenkins smiled. 'Find out for yourself. Run along now, or that nanny will be after you.'

Wendy pulled open the napkin and saw a tiny glazed tart stuffed with a creamy filling. A sprinkling of black dots gleamed on the top. It looked more like a brooch than something you would eat. 'Thank you,' she said. But Mrs Jenkins had turned to a mountain of scallop shells in the shallow stone sink.

Two minutes later, Wendy was climbing up the back stairs towards the nursery. Everything was quiet, thank goodness. Horrible Nanny Holborn was still out with John and Michael at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

Poor John and Michael.

She held the napkin parcel tightly in her hand. Mrs Jenkins was her favourite person in the house, after John and Nana, of course. As she reached the third flight of stairs, she heard Liza, the housemaid, singing from behind the ironing-room door, one of those music-hall songs about moonlight and violets. Wendy smiled to herself. Liza was really singing about Charlie Pickles, the carpenter's apprentice from the mews behind Kensington Place. It was supposed to be a secret but she had heard Liza telling Mrs Jenkins that she and Charlie were engaged to be married.

Wendy climbed up the last flight of stairs and turned down the corridor. It wasn't often Liza sang. Liza knew to keep quiet if Nanny Holborn was about. Nanny Holborn had lost two fiancés in the South African War so she didn't hold with men because all they did was let you down. If she ever heard Liza singing or saw her smiling to herself, Nanny Holborn always went into a fury. No matter how quickly Liza finished her work on her afternoon off, there was always an extra job waiting for her. More often than not it was well into the afternoon before Liza could pin on her hat and take a turn with Charlie around the park.

Poor Liza! She never used to have anything to do with Nanny Holborn. Then Agnes, the nursery maid, had given in her notice and her father hadn't taken on a replacement, which was odd because he always seemed proud that the Darlings had more servants than most of their friends. So Liza was doing two jobs now.

'Not that I mind too much,' she told Wendy. 'Me and Charlie'll need the money to get married. There just ain't enough hours in the day, that's all.'

Wendy crept quickly past the ironing-room door so as not to disturb Liza. She turned the brass handle of the nursery door as gently as she could and closed it softly behind her.

A big black Newfoundland dog looked up from a basket on the linoleum floor. She flopped her tail but didn't get up.

Wendy knelt down beside the basket.

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