The Apothecary Page 0,97

nowhere else to go.

Memories started coming back in bits and pieces. Something made me stop reading and flip to the blank pages at the end.

There was a note on one of those pages, and it wasn’t in my handwriting. It seemed to have been written carefully, with thought, and it said:

Dear Janie,

It should be safe now for you to have this. I’ve read it every day. I hope you don’t mind. I don’t think you would have minded, before. Reading it is how I kept you with me. I’m sending it back now to help you understand why we had to go away, and to tell you that I’ll come back. It might be another year, it might be more, I don’t know. But start working on your chess. I’ll expect a good opening.

Love, B.

It was a rare sunny day at the beginning of spring, and the tree that Benjamin had climbed to get to my window was bursting with green buds. I had a good chess opening, and I sat with the diary on my lap, feeling like I might spill over with a helpless, giddy laughter, and with a sad and serious ache underneath. I hadn’t understood the strange feelings I’d been having all year, but now I did. And I knew without question that Benjamin was out there somewhere with his father, looking out for us, risking his life to keep the world safe.

And that I would see him again.

Acknowledgments

I’m indebted to my friends Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin for the existence of this book, for bringing Janie and Benjamin and the mysterious apothecary to me, and for trusting me with the beginnings of a story they cared deeply about. They described what they had imagined as a movie, let me run with it, and talked through the convolutions with me as it changed. In the process I discovered two new worlds: wintry Cold War London, and the incredibly welcoming world of Penguin children’s publishing, and it’s been a life-changing adventure.

In writing the book, I drew on David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain 1945-1951, the exhibition The Children’s War at The Imperial War Museum in London, and Lyn Smith’s Young Voices: British Children Remember the Second World War.

The Adventures of Robin Hood was an early television program produced by Hannah Weinstein, who moved to London in the early 1950s and hired blacklisted U.S. writers to write scripts under pseudonyms. I have taken liberties with the real details of the show, as I have with the historical figure of the physicist Andrei Sakharov.

The real Chelsea Physic Garden in London is, in fact, a magical place, growing medicinal plants from all over the world. There really is a mulberry tree in the centre with draping branches under which you can hide. Whether the garden grows herbs that can make you tell the truth or become a bird, I’m not sure, but I think it’s important to allow for the possibilities.

Table of Contents

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

A note to the reader

CHAPTER 1: FOLLOWED

CHAPTER 2: THE APOTHECARY

CHAPTER 3: ST BEDEN’S SCHOOL

CHAPTER 4: SPIES

CHAPTER 5: SHERWOOD FOREST

CHAPTER 6: HIS EXCELLENCY

CHAPTER 7: THE MESSAGE

CHAPTER 8: THE PHARMACOPOEIA

CHAPTER 9: THE PHYSIC GARDEN

CHAPTER 10: THE SMELL OF TRUTH

CHAPTER 11: THE SAMOVAR

CHAPTER 12: THE RETURN TO THE GARDEN

CHAPTER 13: THE GARDENER’S LETTER

CHAPTER 14: SCOTLAND YARD

CHAPTER 15: TURNBULL HALL

CHAPTER 16: THE PICKPOCKET

CHAPTER 17: FLIGHT

CHAPTER 18: THE OPERA GAME

CHAPTER 19: INVISIBLE

CHAPTER 20: THE BUNKER

CHAPTER 21: THE OIL OF MNEMOSYNE

CHAPTER 22: THE PILLAR OF SALT

CHAPTER 23: THE APOTHECARY’S PLAN

CHAPTER 24: THE DARK FORCE

CHAPTER 25: SCIENCE TEAM

CHAPTER 26: AT LADY SARAH’S

CHAPTER 27: THE PORT OF LONDON

CHAPTER 28: BREAKING AND ENTERING

CHAPTER 29: THE KONG OLAV

CHAPTER 30: THE ANNIKEN

CHAPTER 31: THE EXECUTION

CHAPTER 32: GENII

CHAPTER 33: NOVA ZEMBLA

CHAPTER 34: THE BOMB

CHAPTER 35: THE FROZEN SEA

CHAPTER 36: ESCAPE

CHAPTER 37: THE WINE OF LETHE

CHAPTER 38: THE GUARDIANS OF PEACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS