All My Sins Remembered by Rosie Thomas

wanted to say and couldn’t, and all the banalities he might have settled for instead, Jake blurted out, ‘Are you afraid of boats?’
    It was the first time since the Mabel summer that Grace had been obliged directly to refuse to go out on to the water. Usually, with some ingenuity, she was able to evade the possibility well in advance. Now she thought how inadequate Jake’s words were. ‘Afraid of boats’ took no account of the nights when she bit the insides of her mouth to stop herself falling asleep, so the dreams couldn’t come, nor of the waking cold terror of the sound of the waves, of the simple smell of salt water.
    She said, ‘I think you might be too, if you had almost drowned.’
    ‘Why didn’t any of us know? Haven’t you told anyone?’
    Grace considered. ‘I think Julius guessed.’
    Jake didn’t want to hear about Julius now. Grace went on, ‘I haven’t told anyone. Only you.’
    Jake gave her such a look of happiness and gratitude for singling him out that Grace forgot her humiliation over the punt.
    ‘You mustn’t worry about it, Grace, I’ll look after you, there’s no need to be afraid of anything.’
    She smiled, looking up at him, tasting some of the satisfaction of power. ‘Thank you, Jake,’ she whispered. He was her admired cousin, their long-time ringleader, and she wanted his allegiance to her alone, that was the admission. And it came to her that although Jake was sixteen and clever and she was three whole years younger and had been taught nothing, she still knew more than he did.
    Behind the folds of her skirt she reached her hand to touch his again, and he took hold of it as though it were the Grail itself.
    The twins and Nathaniel were waiting at the jetty. Julius looked from one of them to the other, with resignation. Clio stared straight ahead, and even in his confusion, Jake saw that she was jealous. He took care to walk beside her on the way home. Only Nathaniel seemed oblivious to what had been happening. He had taken the newspaper out of his bag again and he beat the rolled-up tube of it against his leg as he strode along.
    When they came home, Eleanor was waiting for Nathaniel. ‘Oswald Harris is here,’ she said. ‘In your study.’
    Dr Harris was one of Nathaniel’s colleagues, a specialist in Romance languages and an old family friend. He was a particular favourite of the Hirsh children, and Clio’s face brightened at the mention of his name.
    ‘Oh good . Will he play something with us?’
    ‘Not now, Clio,’ Nathaniel said abruptly. ‘Off you go, all of you.’ He went into the study, and they saw Dr Harris jump up to greet him without his usual smile. Eleanor and Blanche were left in the hallway, their clothes dappled with coloured light from the stained-glass panels in the front door.
    Afterwards the cousins recalled that evening at the end of July as the first time they heard adult talk of Serbia and Austria, and the first time they overheard the murmured word crisis .
    They paid little attention to it, then.
    That year Hugo and Jake were considered old enough to join their parents for dinner, but the twins and Grace still had to sit down with the Babies for nursery supper. Jake was hanging up his jacket in the boot room and Nanny Cooper was already calling the rest of the children to the table when Grace appeared in the doorway. The boot room was a place of discarded galoshes and fraying straw hats and croquet mallets, and she looked around it with a brilliant smile.
    ‘You’re here ,’ she whispered. Her eyes were shining. She closed the door silently, and came straight to him. She put her hands on his forearms, and then she reached up and kissed him on the mouth.
    It was a long kiss, soft-lipped and tasting of strawberries.
    Jake almost fainted. When she drew back he croaked, ‘Grace, come here again, please …’ but she was already at the doorway, easing open the door and checking the corridor beyond.
    Her lips looked very red, and her smile