The Secret Diary

by Anna Stuart

Genres: Historical Fiction; International Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Two women. One house. And a secret that spans decades…

The past merges with the present in an unforgettable, poignant story of love, loss and courage in this beautifully written story set between World War Two and the present day.

She steps into the room and it’s like going back in time.

Catapulting her right into the heart of the 1940s.

The spindle of the record player frozen and ready to play. The flowery wallpaper faded but intact. A soldier’s uniform pressed and hung on a door, coal still in the fireplace.

A floorboard creaks beneath her and she notices a small desk in the corner of the room. She opens the top drawer and runs her hands along the edges, something catching at her fingertips. A hidden compartment. And behind it, the soft edges of a book.

As she dusts it off, she can see it has a red leather covering, the pages yellowing with age. She realises it’s a diary. Some of the pages have been torn out. The first entry has 16th June 1945 printed in neat little letters at the top. Below it, in hurried, untidy script are the words:

‘My name is Nancy Jones. And I have a secret…’

Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Alice Network, and Lilac Girls will love this incredible tale of the amazing bravery and inspiring friendships of everyday women during World War Two that had the power to change history.

Why readers love Anna Stuart:

‘I absolutely LOVE this book… it had my heart breaking and tears constantly streaming down my face!… I can’t give this enough praise, I genuinely loved it so much… A beautiful love story… an emotional rollercoaster… such a tear jerker. Absolutely recommended from me, you NEED to read this!’ Curled Up With a Good Book,⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Oh my heart… I love this book… a real tearjerker… so heart-warming. If you need a little warm hug of a read then this is just perfect.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Oh wow… I absolutely loved it… once I started it I didn't want to put it down. I have recommended it to all my friends.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘It broke my heart and put it back together several times… loved the book from the first page to the last.’Portobello Book Blog,⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I fell hook, line and sinker for this story… Heart-warming… not just a book you read, it’s a book you feel every moment of and is a true treasure.’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Grabs you from the first page… I didn't want to put it down. My favourite read so far this year…

Release date: August 3, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

Nancy sets down her hairbrush and looks at herself curiously in the elegant triple mirror. Three faces stare back but she isn’t sure if she recognises any of them. Who is she now? Is she Nancy the gunner girl, battling with her crew to keep the enemy from invading their skies? Nancy the new wife, fighting for a place as a gamekeeper at her husband’s side? Or Nancy the young mother, keeping a happy home for her growing family?

She feels like all three of them at once, but the world doesn’t seem to want to allow that. Why can’t a woman operate outside the kitchen? Why can’t a wife work? She thought that when the war ended, the fighting would be over, but it seems that for her, and so many women like her, it’s only just starting.

With a sigh, Nancy looks down at the red leather book on the dressing table – a solid, forthright rectangle amongst the curvy hairbrushes and perfume bottles. She bought it just after VE Day to record her married life with the beloved husband she finally knew would come home from submarine-haunted seas. She’d felt such joy that day, such optimism, but peace hasn’t turned out to be quite as simple as she’d hoped.

War has changed them all. The things they’ve seen, the things they’ve done, the secrets they’ve shared. The world is different now, and you can’t just pack the past away with your gas mask and your ration book and ‘go back to normal’, because normal is different too.

Nancy picks up the book and strokes its cover. She’s loved recording the last year in this diary, however up and down it’s been, but she fears she’s been too frank. There’s a secret in here she agreed to keep – for her own sake and the sake of the rest of her fellow gunner girls. She doesn’t regret what they did in the darker corners of the war, but she doesn’t want it known either. It’s locked in their hearts and that’s where it should stay.

Opening the diary, she scans the entries, reliving events, shaking her head at the things she’s been through. Her hand pauses on the final pages and she sighs. She shouldn’t have made this particular entry. It was foolish, reckless.

There’s only one thing to be done.

Gritting her teeth, Nancy takes hold of the last few pages in one hand, braces the other against the spine, and tears. The pages come away cleanly and she looks at the torn remains against the leather, feeling ashamed at defacing the precious book.

No matter. Worse has been lost in the last six years than a few idle scribblings. Setting the papers down, she opens up the left-hand drawer, nudging her lipsticks and compact aside to find the tiny lever and release the compartment beneath. She places the diary gently inside and then, on an impulse, drops a kiss onto her index finger and touches it to the red leather.

A noise somewhere in the house beyond makes her jump, and she hastily closes the compartment and sweeps the lipsticks back across it with a cheery clatter. She stands and all three reflections merge into one Nancy. Giving herself a little nod, she picks up the torn-out pages and looks to the bin, but instinctively her fingers tighten around the papers, around the words – around the secret. Somehow, she can’t quite bring herself to throw this away.

She doesn’t want her wartime secret known right now, but maybe some time in the future, when the suffering is less raw and people are more forgiving, there will be the space for it to come out. She looks around the lovely annex tucked away at the back of the gamekeeper’s cottage she’s proud to call home, and smiles as she spots the perfect hiding place. There is always, it seems, more than one place to keep a secret…

Lorna Haynes climbed slowly out of the car and looked in astonishment at the stunning cottage in front of her. Her mum had said her new home was ‘rather sweet’, but she hadn’t mentioned that it was chocolate-box perfect. She grabbed her phone and checked the address again. Yep – The Gamekeeper’s Cottage, just like the plaque on the wooden gate said.

‘Whoa! Is that where we’re staying?’ Nine-year-old Charlie tumbled out of the back of the car. ‘It’s like something out of the olden days.’

‘It is,’ Lorna agreed, taking in the beautiful house before them.

The Gamekeeper’s Cottage was a golden, sandstone building with a pebbled path leading up to a rose-covered porch, and gabled windows nestling beneath an actual thatched roof. It was the sort of place that Lorna had dreamed of as a child; the sort of place that had fuelled her interest in the past and eventually led to the job she loved as a history teacher. Or rather, the job she had loved until all interest in anything, past, present or future, had been knocked out of her by the dreadful phone call.

She forced her thoughts back to the pretty house, trying desperately to be positive.

‘Isn’t it fantastic, Charlie?’

‘It’s OK, yeah, though it better have Wi-Fi.’

‘I’m sure it will,’ she said, ruffling his hair.

He looked at her sceptically.

‘Minecraft doesn’t work without Wi-Fi, Mum.’

‘Granny has Wi-Fi, Charlie. Remember, she FaceTimes you.’

‘Yeah, but that could be on mobile data.’

Lorna shook her head at her son’s knowledge and was grateful when little Stan emerged, rubbing his eyes where he’d fallen asleep on the journey. Her five-year-old crept up to her, wrapping his hands around her leg, and she hugged him close.

‘Pretty,’ he said, pointing to the rose that climbed over the porch. Then: ‘Are we staying long?’

Lorna’s heart faltered. She’d been so sure about coming here until now. She thought of her best friend, Aki, clasping her hands a few hours ago and saying, ‘Why not go to your mum, Lorna? Why not let someone look after you for a change?’ It had sounded so simple, so very appealing, and she’d made the hour-long journey from Norwich on autopilot, willing herself just to get here. Now she’d made it, though, this beautiful house suddenly felt more daunting than comforting. Should she have come?

‘Lorna! Oh, my sweet one, I’m so glad you’re here.’ Suddenly there was her mum, Mary, running down the path in an elegant jersey dress to scoop all three of them in her arms. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you. I’m so happy you’re here.’

Lorna took a deep breath, drawing in the pleasingly familiar scent of the L’Air du Temps her mum had worn for as long as she could remember and feeling it steady her. Mary drew back and looked into her eyes.

‘My poor darling. I can’t tell you how much my heart aches for you, for all of us. I’m so, so glad you’ve come at last. It’s been tearing me apart not being able to do more for you.’

Lorna smiled.

‘Aki told me to come.’

‘Aki is very wise.’ Mary tenderly kissed her forehead. ‘Come along in, darling. David’s popped out for a bit of shopping, but I’m sure he’ll be back any minute.’

Lorna glanced down the road for her stepdad. Her own father had made for the horizon the moment he’d found out about her foetal existence, so Mary had brought her up alone, rarely even dating. Lorna had liked it as just the two of them when she’d been young but had started to worry about her mum as she’d got older, and so she’d been delighted when Mary had tentatively told her that she had ‘met someone rather nice’. She’d married David last year in a quiet but very happy ceremony. On the few occasions Lorna had met him, he’d seemed lovely, but she didn’t know him all that well and just hoped he didn’t mind them invading his beautiful home. There was no sign of him yet, though, and she looked back to the boys as Mary bent down to speak to them.

‘I told Grandpa David you like to eat cabbage, beetroot and snails – is that right?’

‘Granny! Yu-uck.’

Mary winked at her grandsons.

‘Well, maybe Jaffa cakes, pizza and Haribo then?’

‘Yay!’

Lorna watched as they chased her up the path, enviously easily distracted. She went round to the boot to fetch the bags, taking a little time to herself as Mary absorbed her sons’ constant energies. Perhaps Aki had been right after all.

It had been a desperate six weeks since the phone call telling her that Matt, her husband – her best friend – had been snatched from them. She’d been sitting in the bustling swimming pool café whilst the boys doggy-paddled up and down when the picture of a smiling Matt had popped up on her screen. She’d rolled her eyes to the ceiling, sure he was calling to say he was stuck at work.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to be late, babe?’ she’d purred into the phone. ‘Or I’ll have to punish you like I did last time!’

The awkward silence should have told her something, but it had been noisy in the café. Then: ‘Mrs Haynes?’ It had been a woman’s voice, clipped and formal. Lorna’s blood had run cold.

‘Who is this?’

‘Mrs Haynes, this is PC Patel. Where are you, please?’

‘Why does it matter? What’s happened? What’s wrong?’ she’d babbled. Then: ‘Where’s Matt?’

‘Is there another adult with you? Or someone you can call?’

‘Why? Please – what’s going on?’

‘I’m afraid we need to ask you to come to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, Mrs Haynes. There’s been an accident.’

‘Matt? Is he alive?’

There’d been no mistaking the pause this time and Lorna had collapsed right there in the middle of the café, amongst the lattes and the muffins and the pervasive smell of chlorine, and screamed.

She could remember little else of that terrible day except Aki, her best friend since teacher-training college, arriving to collect her and the wailing boys and take them home. Mary had arrived later and held Lorna’s hand as she’d stood by a blank slab in the bowels of the hospital and seen Matt’s precious face unveiled as if she were in some stupid TV programme. Except that no one had called ‘cut’ and eventually she’d come to realise that he wasn’t coming back. Not this evening, not tomorrow – not ever.

The funeral had been a blur of tears in which Lorna had been able to do little bar clutch Charlie and Stan close and pray that doing so held her together as well, but afterwards she’d insisted Mary and Aki and all the other well-meaning friends let her get on with it. She’d wanted space to breathe, however hard that had felt, but perhaps she’d been mad to think they could get through the worst time of their lives alone. Then, today, she’d tried to send the boys back to school. It hadn’t gone well.

She’d been looking forward to a day alone and had started out fine, with a nice relaxed coffee and an online yoga class. It was when she’d decided to sort Matt’s things that it had all gone wrong. The soft, familiar jumpers had smelled so achingly of him that she’d ended up just crawling into the wardrobe to burrow amongst them. It was only when Aki, who was the headteacher at the boys’ primary school, had called her at lunchtime to tell her how they were getting on, that she’d admitted she was stuck in a cupboard. Aki, bless her, had been there like a shot.

‘You shouldn’t be alone, sweetie,’ she’d said, once she’d finally coaxed her out. ‘Why not go to your mum’s? You’re signed off till September, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but the boys aren’t.’

Aki had stroked her back softly.

‘There’s less than two weeks to the summer holidays, Lorna, and they’re only young – what does it matter?’

‘Aki Sato – you can’t say that.’

‘Not officially, maybe, but I can to you. In fact, as their headteacher, I’m authorising their absence. What they need now is time and space, and so do you.’

‘Really?’

Lorna had looked into Aki’s burnt-chocolate eyes and seen nothing but care.

‘Really, Lor! Mary’s been offering five times a day, so take her up on it. It’s not weakness. It doesn’t mean you can’t cope. It just makes sense to let someone else share the burden, and who better than your mum?’

‘Who better than my mum?’ Lorna echoed now, yanking the big suitcase out of the car, and heading for the pretty gate.

Part of her wished that she was retreating to the house she’d grown up in, going back to the safety of her childhood, but truth be told, that had been a cramped suburban terrace and not a patch on the beautiful cottage before her. Plus, as soon as she stepped in the door, she smelled a familiar scent of home baking, washing powder and flowers, and felt the tension in her shoulders physically release. Looking around the cosy hallway full of coats and wellies, she noticed the same photo that had always hung in her old house and was comforted.

The picture was of her and Mary on a double swing, both with their heads flung back, laughing their happiness up to the blue skies above, and it was hard not to smile when you saw it. It also, to Lorna, summed up her childhood – just her and her mum against the world.

‘It’s a lovely picture.’

Lorna jumped at the low voice and swung round to see her new stepdad standing in the doorway. He had a supermarket bag in each hand, incongruous against his slim, corduroy-and-cashmere-clad frame. She straightened automatically.

‘David. Hi. Thanks for having us to stay.’

He dropped the bags.

‘Nonsense! We’re delighted to have you. I’m so, so sorry for your loss, Lorna. May I?’ He held out his arms and, surprised, she nodded and stepped into them. His grip was warm and strong, and he smelled of Imperial Leather and fresh grass. ‘You poor child. It’s so cruel.’

That was so exactly what it was, and she hugged him back gratefully. She should have known her mum would marry someone nice, but it was good to see it for herself all the same. The knowledge that Mary now lived in David’s house had perhaps been part of her concern about coming here; a concern that was rapidly dissipating.

‘Let me take that to your room,’ he said, reaching for her suitcase. ‘Would you like to come and see it?’

‘The boys…’ she said faintly.

‘Are fine with your mum, really. She’s bursting with grandmotherly energy, so let her take some of the slack and give yourself a little time to rest. I imagine you need it.’

‘No, I—’

‘It’s allowed, you know. In fact, it’s vital – that’s professional advice.’

He gave her a kind wink. He was a retired GP so she supposed he knew what he was talking about, but it was still hard to believe. The boys had lost their father; surely they needed her more than ever.

‘Maybe a quick look,’ she agreed, glancing down the corridor to where she could hear Charlie and Stan chattering to her mum in what must be the kitchen.

‘No problem. We thought you could go in the annex so you’d have a little space from us oldies, but if you’d rather be in the main house that’s totally fine too.’

‘Annex?’

Lorna looked around curiously. She’d specialised in homes and their interiors in the third year of her history degree, and the cottage had all the squinty angles and low beams she would have expected from an eighteenth-century building. It didn’t seem the place for anything as modern-sounding as an annex.

‘It was built between the wars,’ David told her, ‘back before anyone worried about little things like planning permission. This way.’

He led her towards the kitchen but turned right into a square hallway. Oak doors on either side stood open to a cosy living room and a wood-panelled study, but the white-painted one dead ahead was shut. David reached for the handle as Mary appeared behind them, the boys in tow, and Lorna looked quizzically at her.

‘You’ll love it, darling,’ her mum said. ‘It’s been kept almost totally as it was in the forties. It’s like stepping into history.’

She nodded keenly at her and Lorna looked obediently back to the white door. This was the sort of thing that would normally have the historian in her salivating, but since Matt had died it had been hard to taste the world in the same way. It all seemed so dull and lifeless. She battled to summon up a smile, and followed David inside.

‘Wow!’

‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Mary gushed, as the boys darted past Lorna and raced around the space, touching everything as if it were an interactive museum. It might as well have been. The living area had a parquet floor, softened by a swirly rug, and was furnished with low art deco armchairs and coffee table. The fireplace was cast iron with red tiles, and on the mantelpiece sat an ancient walnut wireless.

To one side was a bright kitchenette with a Bakelite oven and open shelving fronted with faded gingham curtains, and to the other, a door stood open to a luminously pink bedroom. The double bed was covered with a shiny, pale pink eiderdown, and had a slim wardrobe to one side and an art deco dressing table to the other, complete with a big triple mirror. The walls were papered in garish cerise roses. The whole effect was startling.

‘It’s…’ Lorna started, but she couldn’t find the right words.

‘Do we have to sleep in there?’ Charlie demanded, pointing disgustedly into the pink room.

‘No, Charlie. These are for you and Stan.’

Mary indicated a set of bunk beds against the right-hand wall.

‘Cool! Bagsie the top one.’

Charlie flung himself up the ladder. Stan watched him thoughtfully, clearly deciding whether this was a privilege worth fighting over, then gave a little shrug and climbed happily into the cave-like space of the bottom bunk. Lorna’s heart ached with love for them both.

‘Are those bunks usually there?’

‘No,’ Mary admitted. ‘We brought them from upstairs after you called and I popped out for some new linen. I hope they like it.’

‘Minecraft! Cool covers, Granny!’

‘They do,’ Lorna said, her heart throbbing with gratitude. ‘You didn’t need to do this, Mum.’

‘I know that, Lorna, but I wanted to. If I can’t spoil you three, who can I spoil?’

Lorna swallowed. You three. That’s what they were now – not a nice, solid square of a family but a spiky triangle.

‘It’s very kind,’ she managed.

‘Well, I thought you’d like to be in here for, you know, the history. It’s been like this since just after the Second World War. David rents it out for TV and that. It’s been in all sorts of programmes. Do you like it?’

Lorna looked around, desperately wanting to like it. Some dispassionate, academic part of her historian’s brain was definitely impressed, but she couldn’t summon up anything more.

‘It’s great, Mum,’ she said flatly.

‘Oh, Lorna.’

‘It is, really. I just…’ The ever-ready tears threatened again and she strode into the pink bedroom, fighting them hard. ‘I just don’t seem to have the energy to love stuff like this at the moment. I don’t have the energy to love anything. Well, apart from the boys of course, and you and, and…’

Now the tears were coming. Matt would have thought this place was hilarious, was all she could think as she looked around at the ludicrously pink bedroom. The fact that she’d never, ever be able to show it to him threatened to overwhelm her. She sank onto the bed, battling for strength, and was dimly aware of David saying something about showing the boys the garden, and her mum sitting down next to her and taking her hand. She clutched tightly on to it, scared that she might float away on this endless tide of grief.

‘I miss him so much, Mum.’

‘Of course you do, darling. Of course you do. We all miss him. I’ve often woken myself crying in the night, remembering all the happy times we had together, so I can’t begin to imagine how awful it is for you. I wish I could do it for you, Lor. I wish I could take it from you.’

Lorna squeezed her fingers.

‘You’re doing loads already, Mum. It’s good to be here, really it is. The annex is amazing. I just can’t seem to find any enthusiasm for the past at the moment, or the present for that matter. As for the future…’

She choked up on the word, for the future felt like one great big gaping hole, waiting to suck her into its dark centre.

‘Sleep,’ Mary said firmly. ‘That’s what you need.’

‘If only it were that easy.’

‘I know, darling, but everything is a little bit easier with some rest and some food. Are you hungry?’ Lorna shook her head. ‘I bet the boys are. Why don’t I go and feed them their tea and you can slide into that bed and have a little nap?’

She looked at the pink bed.

‘Are those forties sheets?’

Mary laughed.

‘Lord love you, no. Brand new, I promise. So, what do you think – a little lie-down? We’ve got all summer to do things, so let’s take it a day at a time, shall we?’ Lorna nodded and, feeling like a little girl again, let her mum tuck her under the sheets and kiss her forehead. ‘Take as long as you need.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

Mary tiptoed out and Lorna lay there, fearing that she needed more time to get over losing her husband than she would ever have. She and Matt should have been celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary next month. They’d been planning a week away, just the two of them. Matt had emailed her a link to an amazing-looking apartment in Genoa the very morning the lorry had ploughed into him. She’d bookmarked the link, and she called it up whenever she particularly wanted to torment herself with what would now never be. That was no way to think, was it? She had to be strong, positive, thankful – all that crap.

She closed her eyes, willing her tortured brain to let go, but it wasn’t having any of it. All she could see was pictures of Matt the day they’d met. She saw him desperately trying to steer his sledge sideways as he came careering towards her at the bottom of a snowy slope in the local park one beautifully cold winter; she saw his blue eyes looking into hers as he offered to buy her a mulled wine in the nearby pub to make up for scaring her; then his warm lips soft against her own as, much, much later that night, he’d walked her home. They’d been almost inseparable from that moment on, and had married two years later. Now he was gone.

Anger rippled through her and she threw back the covers, pacing the little room in an attempt to keep it at bay until, catching sight of herself in the triple mirror, she stopped. This way madness lay. Taking several deep breaths, she sat down on the stool and considered her reflection. God, she was a fright – her eyes were etched with red, her skin as pale as if it were November and not a sunny July, and her chestnut hair looked like something might be nesting in it. Perhaps she’d have a haircut. That was what people did, wasn’t it? That was part of the ‘cycle of grief’. Her mum was bound to have some lovely salon in the area where she could have it cut short. If nothing else, it would be less work to look after. For now, though, it needed a good brush.

She reached for the handle of the left-hand drawer in the art deco dressing table. It rattled open and she paused, then bent and looked inside. There was no hairbrush, or indeed anything else, bar a lining cut from some ancient, embossed wallpaper. That, however, was no longer what she was looking for. Lorna had written her dissertation on ‘The Secrets in the Furniture – A Study in Hidden Panels through History’, and she was sure she recognised this drawer style from her research. If she wasn’t mistaken, you just had to lift out the lining and reach down the central side for a small lever.

Click.

Lorna froze. It had worked. It had actually worked. She ran her hands along the base of the drawer for the ridge of the secret panel and prised it open. It was a slim compartment, big enough for a few jewels or papers, or maybe…

The book was small and bound with dark red leather, tied shut with a matching cord. 1945 was written onto a cream panel on the front in a careful hand. Lorna reached in and lifted it out, her heart pounding with something other than grief for the first time since that hideous phone call six long, dark weeks ago. Untying the cord, she opened it up and read the first line: Saturday, 16 June 1945.

‘A diary!’ she gasped.

It was like a gift – a little bit of joy from a world that had only thrown her pain for far too long. With trembling hands, Lorna took the diary back to bed and opened it up. So this is it, she read. I’m here at the Gamekeeper’s Cottage and it’s ten times as pretty as Joe led me to believe.

She stared at the words. Seventy-six years ago, another woman had come to the Gamekeeper’s Cottage and written those words, presumably in the very bed Lorna was now lying in. They were housemates across the ages and it seemed that, even if she couldn’t enjoy her own life right now, she could at least escape into someone else’s.

Saturday, 16 June 1945

So this is it. I’m here at the Gamekeeper’s Cottage and it’s ten times as pretty as Joe led me to believe. Ten times as grand too. I can’t believe this is going to be my home now, my home as Mrs Nancy Wilson proper after a crazy year as a half-wife. The Gamekeeper’s Cottage – our family home, the place where we’ll live and work, the place where we’ll be man and wife, the place, I suppose, where we’ll be mother and father. It’s exciting but it’s terrifying too.

Nancy Jones – Wilson now, she had to remember that – stared up at the Gamekeeper’s Cottage in disbelief. It was beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale, and a world apart from her own family’s cramped terrace up in Chester. Was she really going to live here? Work here? She stared at the thatched roof, gabled windows and rose-covered porch.

‘It’s lovely,’ she cried, fumbling her diary back into her bag.

The two men sitting in front of her in the borrowed motor car turned and smiled, and for a moment she saw how very similar they were. Father and son were distinguishable only by the lines time had etched into Ted’s weather-beaten face, and the scar on Joe’s temple where he’d been hit by debris as his boat went down at Anzio. Her heart turned over with love.

It was still so hard to truly believe she was here. She’d been stationed on the anti-aircraft gun at RAF Langham just up the road for the last three years, so she knew the area well, but this would be different. This time she would be part of the village. She could still so vividly remember Joe walking into the local pub back at the start of 1943, looking so handsome in his naval uniform, with his brown hair cut short and his hazel eyes alight with the joy of being home. She and the other gunner girls had been about to head back to base but, seeing Joe, a rich energy had run through Nancy’s veins and she’d persuaded the others to stay on for one more.

Heading to the bar, she’d engineered bumping into him, but had executed her nudge a little too enthusiastically, sending his pint splashing down his front. Her frantic apology had, thankfully, turned into a conversation which had rapidly become a flirtation and then the sweetest kiss Nancy had ever known. It had been his last night of leave before he’d had to report to the south coast to set sail for the Mediterranean, so she’d sent the others back to base without her and defied curfew to sit up all night beneath the stars with him, talking and kissing.

Twice m. . .