Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Joan Pengelly is Tom's older sister, on the edge of grown-up when Edie arrives — a careful politeness that keeps a newcomer at arm's length. As the war pulls the older ones away into service, she takes up her own share of the work. Reserved where the others are plain, she gives Edie the warmest thing anyone in Devon says to her, precisely because she is the last to say it for nothing.