Christmas flew by in a flurry of board games, an assortment of foods, and a speech from the King - the first of its kind. By the time I went to bed, I was exhausted from the amount of food and the games we played that I forgot all about the present Jonathan had found under the tree, the one I assumed had come from Alec. It would remain unopened for several months.

After the Christmas season passed, we returned to working on anything in the house that needed fixing or replacing. I had been surprised that there had been anything left to do since we had done so much in those first few months. Jonathan and I set to work repairing the furniture upstairs, including my bed which had a broken slat in the middle that had gone unnoticed by me for over four months.

I received several more letters from Mum and Dad and I sent them responses, telling them of our Christmas and of Goose, who got bigger every day and had started to hang around Jonathan and me when we did our work. Her training had been going well even though I had no idea what I was doing and just told her to do things over and over again until she obeyed me. It worked so I couldn't really complain about it too much.

"Can you believe we've been here for six months?" Eva asked, scuffing the toe of her boot along the ground.

"Hm, not the week-long trip I had been expecting." I laughed.

"Definitely not. With rationing and everything, I get the feeling we might be here a little while longer."

"Jonathan is less than impressed that bacon has been rationed, he was really annoyed when they announced it."

Eva laughed. "Aunt Margaret was upset by the sugar rationing, she's worried about her cakes."

"There's a war going on and she's worried about her confectionary?"

"She says cake cheers people up." She shrugged.

"That's true enough, I suppose."

We continued to walk through the village square with no real sense of where we were going or what we were going to do. Eva and I had a promise to see each other at least once a week other than a Sunday, especially since it took us so long to be able to talk away from our host families the first time. Neither of us had seen Enid or Mark that much over the passing weeks, but Enid had been busy with school and Mark still struggled on the farm.

The longer we spent away from the city, the further apart our little friendship group seemed to drift. Enid had made friends at school and spent more time with them since they often studied together once the school day ended. Mark had several new siblings since his host family had several younger children of their own and so when he wasn't working on the farm, he was entertaining them. Only Eva and I made a conscious effort to see each other, but we had been friends since we were born.

I could hardly believe we had been in the country for as long as we had and sometimes I forgot that the war was even going on. Planes continued to fly overhead and the Government had introduced rationing to limit our food supplies because of the Germans bombing our imported goods from the Continent. Other than that, it was easy to forget that the war was even happening.

"Have you seen Alec recently?" Eva teased.

I stuck my tongue out at her. "You're not funny."

"He gave you a puppy for Christmas! Come on! And he finished the carving on the sign. Now that's a sign."

"Mr Thompson gave me the puppy, not him. There are no signs."

"Yes, there are." She paused. "Both physical and metaphorical."

I rolled my eyes. "You're annoying. Can we talk about something else?"

"I got a letter from Anthony today," she said. "There's talk of sending them off to France, just in case Hitler decides to try his luck."

"Will he be able to see you before he goes?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. They're to finish training and then be sent away. It was bound to happen eventually, but now it just feels real."

I nodded my head in agreement and we continued to walk through the village square in silence. With Dad away with the Navy, although he said he had yet to be deployed on any missions, hearing of Anthony finally being sent over to the Continent made the war real. Before, it felt like we were in a bubble of calm and as far away from the storm as possible. We knew the likelihood of family being sent overseas, but it had yet to happen and so we forgot about it. Now it was happening and we could do nothing to ignore it.

Our ignorance surrounding the war meant we were safe from the reality of it, safe from the inevitable news that would come. I liked being in that bubble of bliss and ignorance, unknown and unwilling to accept that Dad's time would come in the end. Even though I had been out of London for six months, I wanted to believe that the war would be over before Dad had a chance to be sent anywhere. With Anthony being sent away in the coming weeks, Dad's time would come and I needed to find a way to accept that.

When it started to get dark, Eva and I went our separate ways with her returning to the Post Office and me heading back up to the farm. Cold wind whipped around me and I pulled my coat tightly against my body to fight against it. My feet slipped and slid on the mud that coated the ground after the recent rainstorm and the sun disappeared behind the clouds faster than I would have liked. The Goodwin's agreed to allow me into the village on my own as long as I was back before dark, but it felt like the sun had decided to challenge me to a battle.

I took the various hills at a run, charging up them in an attempt to beat the sun at its own game. When I reached the boundary to the farm, I still had some light left and continued towards the farmhouse, trying to hide the fact that I had been running. If Barbara thought I had almost been late, she most likely would never let me out into the village on my own again. She was very strict when it came to timekeeping.

"You got lucky, Syb. You had about ten minutes of daylight left," Jonathan said as I stripped my coat off and hung it on the stand.

"Hm, a little too close of a call I think, young lady."

"I know, I'm sorry. I was talking to Eva, her brother is being sent off to France soon," I said.

"Poor thing, she must be terrified. Can she see him before he goes?"

I shook my head. "She doesn't think so."

"We'll just have to pray he makes it home."

"Pray Hitler doesn't see France as his next target. He took Poland in less than a month and France still hasn't recovered from the Great War, if they get attacked, they might not be able to hold him off," Jonathan said.

"Do you think so?" I asked, sitting on the sofa and lifting Goose up on the cushion beside me. She nudged her head under my hand so I would be forced to give her a stroke.

Jonathan nodded. "The French suffered a lot of losses during the Great War, as we all did, but the Germans have been building their army for years now and I doubt the French will be able to build theirs quick enough to protect themselves, even with our help."

"You shouldn't say things like that, Jonathan. The French might pull through," Barbara said.

"I wouldn't want to be out there fighting Hitler's army, that's for sure and certain. The way they marched into Poland? I'm glad we're an island."

Barbara's head appeared from around a wall and I noticed the slight shake of her head and the grim line that she had drawn her lips into. I didn't want to think about the idea of France falling and the Germans decided that we were their next target during their sweep across Europe. If they decided that were next, I knew Dad would be put into the firing line since our battles would take place at sea or the air rather than on land. Dad would be right there.

Goose clambered up onto my lap and demanded I fussed her which offered me a minor distraction from the thoughts zipping through my head. I wrote to Mum and told her that Mr Thompson had gifted me a puppy for Christmas and although she wasn't all too pleased with the head, she had agreed that he could come home with me if I housetrained him. Of course, we didn't know when that would be and I knew she would get settled with the Goodwin's.

It amazed me just how quickly not only she had adjusted to living with us, but also how quickly I adjusted. I would always view London as my home and I knew that I would return once the war was over, but I had grown used to the country and a little more comfortable with life on the farm. Every morning I would wake up the chickens rather than cars, the air was clean and not covered in smoke or smog. I could wear slacks daily without someone pulling a face and run around without the threat of bumping into someone.

London would always be my home, but the country did have its appeals.

After fussing Goose for an hour - she was a very needy puppy - we settled down to supper which consisted of a pie that Barbara had spent the day making. She was going to teach me how to make pastry, but I made a mess really fast so she sent me away. Cooking had never been my strong suit.

"Did you see Alec when you were in the village?" Jonathan asked, stabbing at the pie with his knife.

I shook my head. "I saw Mabel, but not Alec."

"He came here looking for you." He couldn't hide the sly smile creeping up onto his face.

"What for?"

"Wanted to know how Goose was getting on and to see if you wanted to restart your riding lessons since the weather is starting to settle. You don't want to forget what you're doing."

"What did you tell him?" I shovelled some peas into my mouth.

"That you would be up for it, I know Jigsaw is itching to go for another ride."

I nodded my head and swallowed the peas. "Alright.

"Did you ever open that Christmas present? The one Jonathan found under the tree?" Barbara asked.

"Not yet, I keep forgetting."

Jonathan stared at me, a smile creeping up his face and I knew what he would say before he even said it, Eva had the same thing. "I bet it's from Alec."

I glared at him but didn't say anything. The thought had crossed my mind, especially after I saw him bend down close to the tree when he dropped Goose off. Part of me knew that that had been the reason why I had yet to open the present. Opening it would give credence to Jonathan and Eva's wild theories and I didn't want to give them any more ammunition since they already had enough. Still, I knew I would have to open it.

After supper and my usual scheduled reading lessons which were coming along quite nicely according to Jonathan, I went up to my room with Goose. She settled herself on the end of my bed and was asleep within minutes whilst I took the present from the top of my dresser and looked at the label. It didn't have anything other than my name but there weren't many people it could have come from, especially since I knew the handwriting of my other friends.

Sighing to myself, I pulled the label off and then untied the string that had been wrapped around the brown paper. Once the string had been removed, the paper fell away and exposed a small, wooden horse. It looked to be hand-carved, but whoever made it had painted it the same colour as Jigsaw with the same patterns on its body. Whoever made it had put a lot of time and effort into it.

I thought back to my time in the workshop with Alec, he had been working on something but he wouldn't show me what it was and kept it out of sight whenever I looked at him. To be honest, I had been so focused on the sign that I doubt I would have noticed if he had been working on the horse. He would also know the colouring of Jigsaw. Alec had to have been the one to make the horse, there was no one else it could have been.

Goose made a noise at the end of my bed and I smiled, putting the horse on my dresser and changing into my pyjamas. I crawled between the sheets and stared at the horse before rolling over and closing my eyes. There were more important things to be thinking about than whether or not Alec had given me a Christmas present.

~~~

A/N - We are back with Chapter Twenty-Six! This chapter should have been uploaded yesterday but I forgot... I know... xD

Questions! Do you think there is something between Alec and Sybil? Did you guess that the present had been from Alec?

Comment below!

First Published - September 9th, 2021