Two years before the story begins, Margaret “Meg” Kenyon watches her father, who is English, leave for the war. Because she resents him having to leave, the young girl does not wave goodbye to him. At the end of the Prologue, she comments that she will regret her decision in the following years.

Meg, who is now 12 years old, prepares to go into town to sell produce on the black market. She, her French mother Sylvie, and her grandmother live on a farm where they grow food for the people in the nearby town. Unbeknownst to her mother, Meg keeps coded notes in a notebook to help the resistance. While the young girl is in town, her mother also goes on a mysterious errand.

Meg, who has been warned not to sell anything to strangers, waits for customers in an abandoned shop. After selling potatoes to two women, she notices an unknown young boy come into the shop. He introduces himself as Jakob, and although Meg does not want to sell him anything, she gives him some potatoes after he warns her that German soldiers have just arrived in town.