The Innocents

by Margery Sharp

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Audio available 4.3

Shortly before the Second World War, Cecilia and Rab Guthrie leave their three-year-old daughter Antoinette with an unmarried friend in East Anglia while they travel in Europe. Antoinette does not speak, is frightened by noise and requires patient routines that her parents have not learned to provide. War prevents the Guthries from returning from America to collect her.

Over the following years, Antoinette and her foster mother build a quiet life based on trust, language and shared attention. When Cecilia returns after the war, she expects to resume motherhood and take the girl to the United States. The conflict over Antoinette’s future asks whether legal parenthood outweighs the bond created by the person who has understood and cared for the child.