Opening
Christmas cracks Ada’s world open. In the wake of terror and tenderness, she begins to trust a new kind of family even as the war tightens its grip. Hope rises with the promise of surgery—and then shatters—forcing Ada to redefine who she is without her mother, without a “fix,” and with love that refuses to leave.
What Happens
Chapter 31: Merry Christmas
Christmas morning dawns on the floor, blankets piled over Ada Smith, Jamie Smith, and Susan Smith, right after Ada’s violent panic attack. Ada remembers screaming and striking out while Susan only holds her. When Ada wakes, Susan’s blouse is torn and her face is scratched. Ada braces for punishment, the reflex of a child trained by Mam and the long shadow of Trauma, Abuse, and Healing.
Instead, Jamie and Susan wish her a warm “Merry Christmas.” Susan tells Ada she wasn’t “bad” but “sad, angry, frightened.” They change into pajamas, open stockings, and unwrap presents—hair ribbons, a new halter for Butter, drawing supplies, and a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Ada feels like an imposter in a green velvet dress, a “shiny bright girl” she doesn’t believe she is. She gives Jamie and Susan the scarves she knitted; Susan is moved to tears.
Three pilot friends join for dinner. Ada keeps calm in the velvet dress that triggered her breakdown and, that night, listens as Susan reads Alice in Wonderland. Ada sees herself in a girl who tumbles into a world that doesn’t make sense—an early mirror of Identity and Self-Worth.
Chapter 32: An Operation to Fix Your Foot
January brings rationing and fear of hunger. Ada and Jamie hoard food until Susan promises she will feed them even if she must work as a char. Ada finally asks why Susan bothers—she never wanted children. Susan answers: her sorrow was about Becky, the partner she loved and lost. She never wanted marriage; with Becky, she was happy.
As Ada’s reading and riding improve, her anger intensifies. She resents Susan for feeling temporary, Mam for abandoning them, Fred Grimes for wearing her imperfect scarf, and Maggie Thorton for her easy fluency with schoolwork. To plant solid hope, Susan promises to seek Mam’s permission for a surgery to correct Ada’s foot. For the first time, Ada imagines a future not defined by her body.
Chapter 33: Return to Sender
Dr. Graham explains the surgery: it’s elective and requires a parent’s consent. The operation won’t make Ada’s foot perfect, but it can set it straight so she can walk on its sole and wear a normal shoe. Ada reels—treatment should have started when she was a baby. The truth reframes her life: Mam’s neglect wasn’t ignorance; it was a choice that trapped her. Susan’s letters haven’t been attempts to send her away; they’ve been pleas for consent.
Ada composes a careful request: “Dear Mam, please let them fix me.” She checks the post twice daily for twelve days until her envelope returns stamped, “Return to sender. No longer at this address.” Mam is gone. Without a parent’s signature, Susan can’t authorize surgery. Ada sobs that she doesn’t want to “just survive.” Susan can only hold her, promising presence if not a cure.
Chapter 34: Careless Talk Costs Lives
Winter hardens. Ada keeps working at the stables, embodying growing Courage and Resilience. Worried about chilblains, Susan and Fred design a leather boot to protect her foot—a small invention that feels like love made practical. When Ada asks if she’ll still live with Susan next winter, Susan answers, “It’s starting to look that way.”
The war presses closer. U-boats sink British ships, and paranoia rises. At tea with Stephen and his blind guardian, the colonel insists spies lurk everywhere. Posters appear: “Careless talk costs lives.” The ambient threat of War as a Catalyst for Change seeps into the village, echoing Ada’s inner anarchy after the returned letter.
Chapter 35: Dunkirk
By Easter, Maggie returns to a diminished estate and confides that Lady Thorton is unraveling with fear for Jonathan in the RAF, haunted by the deaths of her brothers in the last war. For Ada’s birthday, Susan hosts a “Celebration Tea,” declaring Ada eleven. She gifts a new dress and her own worn copy of The Wind in the Willows, inscribed, “To Ada with love”—the first explicit statement of love and a landmark in their Found Family.
Joy bends under sorrow; Ada feels swallowed by sadness she can’t name. Then Hitler invades Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. Jamie starts wetting the bed again until RAF soldiers hand him the vital job of lookout. In May, Hitler invades France; the word “Dunkirk” arrives in the village like a knell, an unfolding disaster that darkens the horizon.
Character Development
As the war accelerates, the family Susan, Ada, and Jamie build becomes both sanctuary and crucible. Ada’s longing for repair collides with the truth of abandonment, and love must hold where surgery cannot.
- Ada: Panic gives way to trust as she experiences care without punishment. Learning her foot was treatable forces a reckoning with Mam’s cruelty. With surgery denied, she begins to imagine a self not contingent on a “fix” and edges closer to accepting Susan as home.
- Susan: She acts as a steady mother, weathering Ada’s breakdown, revealing her grief for Becky, and fighting for the surgery. “To Ada with love” marks her full embrace of parenthood.
- Jamie: He radiates simple joy at Christmas, then absorbs wartime fear. His “spy lookout” role channels anxiety into purpose.
- Maggie: She connects Ada to peer friendship and exposes the fragility inside privilege, especially in Lady Thorton’s private fear.
Themes & Symbols
The ache and repair of Trauma, Abuse, and Healing drive these chapters. Susan answers Ada’s terror with containment, not violence, rewriting the rules of safety. The revelation about early treatment becomes a second wound, proving Mam’s harm was active, not accidental. Even so, daily acts—the leather boot, warm meals, bedtime reading—stitch Ada back together.
Identity and Self-Worth shift from the fantasy of a “normal” body to the reality of chosen love. The promised surgery tempts Ada with belonging; the lost consent forces her to root value elsewhere. The “pretend” birthday and the gift of a beloved book make a new history on purpose.
Symbols:
- Alice in Wonderland: Ada’s disorientation in Kent—new rules, new language—mirrors Alice’s tumble into nonsense.
- The Returned Letter: Physical proof of abandonment; the past no longer forwards.
- The Inscribed Book: An inheritance of love and home, passed from Susan’s life into Ada’s hands.
- “Careless talk costs lives”: A village mantra that captures both wartime vigilance and Ada’s learned fear of speaking her needs.
Key Quotes
“Merry Christmas,” Susan said, smiling at me.
- After a night of panic, Susan meets Ada with joy, not judgment. The line reframes Christmas as rebirth—safety replacing fear.
“You weren’t bad. You were sad, angry, frightened.”
- Susan names feelings instead of crimes. Language becomes medicine, giving Ada a way to understand herself without shame.
“Dear Mam, please let them fix me.”
- The plea compresses Ada’s hope into seven words. It reveals how much she still seeks permission from the person who hurt her.
Return to sender. No longer at this address.
- Bureaucratic ink delivers the novel’s cruelest message. A mother’s absence arrives as an official stamp, severing the last thread of hope for consent.
“I don’t want to just survive.”
- Ada rejects mere endurance. The line crystallizes her quest: a life that includes joy, choice, and dignity.
“It’s starting to look that way.”
- Susan’s quiet promise of permanence counters every temporary lodging of Ada’s past. The future begins to solidify.
To Ada with love.
- The inscription formalizes family. Love, not legality or blood, signs the adoption.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Chapters 31–35 mark the hinge of the novel. Ada learns the full truth of Mam’s abuse and loses the dream of surgical rescue, yet gains something sturdier: a family that chooses her. The private battle for Ada’s healing runs parallel to the public crisis of war—from posters to U-boats to Dunkirk—tightening external stakes as her internal world steadies. By the end of this section, the question shifts from “Can Ada be fixed?” to “How strong can Ada become?”—setting up a final act where love, not correction, proves decisive.