I felt a bit light-headed and dizzy. Rhona strummed her guitar, and then started picking. She said, "This song is one of my favourites, and I'd love to record it, but Nina Simone has beaten me to it. It's called 'I Wish I knew How it Feels to be Free.' " As she played and sang, all sorts of thoughts and feelings were whirling round in my head. I couldn't put them into words, and as the train rolled along I went into a kind of waking dream. I shouted out, "But I have to stay there for eight more years before I can be free!" Then my thoughts became clear, and I said, "Sometimes I have trouble knowing what is real and what is a dream."
It is September 1967, and Pippa Dunbar is ten years old, and in a hostile place, far away from anyone who loves her. She has already learned some harsh lessons, but will her natural resilience, and experience of life so far, be enough to keep her little boat afloat in the cold and dangerous sea that surrounds her?
Your Beautiful Place is the fourth in the My True Nature series of novels, exploring attachment, love and loss in Britain in the 1960s and 70s.
