Prologue
1919
So let’s start at the beginning, before the outbreak of a second world war devastated everything. Growing up in the country was something every little girl wishes for. My father moved out here, to the little village of Dunstable, after the devastation of the World War One, he met mother out here, she was a country girl, the daughter of a grocer, yet she was absolutely beautiful. My mother was the prettiest girl in the village, she had beautiful brown curls with stunningly piercing blue eyes. There are photos all over our cottage of her and my father, my mother wearing a fited pockadot dress with a bow in her hair and my father slightly older than her in a pinstripe suit, you could tell from any of the photographs how madly they were in love with each other. Dunstable is a quaint little village with a post office, my grandparents Nancy and Davie's grocers , a butchers and acres and acres of fields, which were me and my brother Eddies playground. Eddie was there first born son, born only a few months after their marriage yet loved by the whole village, I was born a year after Eddie, they named me Nancy over Grandma Nancy who lived just down the road.
Eddie and I were sent to the village school until the age of 14, when I was to be educated further by a nanny at home and Eddie was to be sent off to a finishing school on the borders of Scotland, I was just glad it wasn’t all the way in Switzerland which father sometimes threatened. It was hard on us being apart, he was my older brother, he took care of me, I was always safe with him by my side. I wasn’t just his little sister I was his best friend, I was his ally when we snuck into fathers office overhearing conversations that would go over my head, and sneaking jam tarts from the top cupboard where mother had hidden them. Mother would go mad, but we would always work together and get round my mother who loved us too much to scold us properly.
1936
As the years passed I learned quickly that Eddie would be gone for months at a time, at the beginning he would send letters every other day, telling me how much he missed Dunstable, how much he missed me and how he had planned out a fool proof plan to escape from these ‘Carlisle nitwits.’ Yet as every week past I knew the letters were destined to phase out, nanny would tell me to stop expecting them to come, and that Eddie needed to get on with becoming a man without his little sister troubling him. When Eddie turned seventeen a year older than me, he returned home, a man, that didn’t need his little sister anymore.
Nanny stopped calling on me as I became sixteen she said there was nothing left to teach me, that I now knew more than she could ever teach me. I had started helping mother around the house, baking, cleaning, and tending the garden and farm plot that we owned. It was only small but my mother needed help watering and planting and digging up weeds. My father had gotten Eddie a job with him as part of the local government; he was to start as a clerk but then work up to a director of the local branch as father got older.
1937
On August 23rdI turned seventeen, my mother threw a party, inviting all the village girls and boys nanny and the rest of my family, it is one of my favourite memories. We had been up almost all night, me, mother and Eddie making jellies and a big victoria sponge cake. The party was to be held at the village green, Eddie had strung up bunting from each tree enclosing the green, it looked stunning. There was dancing and cake and presents. My mother gave me her grandmothers’ vanity case, it was beautiful and had a mirror that showed my curls cascading around my smiling face. My grandmother had bought me a notepad and pen with a note in it saying ‘a girl will always want to say everything, but sometimes they can only write it down.’ My mother frowned and told me I could do whatever I wanted and no man could stop me. My best friend Susie had bought me bright red lipstick telling me to hide it from my father and my first pair of silk stockings that she managed to get from a shop in London, it was just so glamorous.
That was the day my father was sent back to London, for a very important meeting with none other than Neville Chamberlain, former foreign secretary and as of May 1937 was the Prime minister of Britain. Eddie wanted to go with, but he wasn’t allowed, father had said “you are only eighteen Edward and Chamberlain isn’t a man to have his time wasted by boys.” It made Eddie furious but we all knew father was right.
1939
War was declared with the third Reich in September 1939, Father had stayed in London more often than he was home for the past year. We all knew it was coming, first Czechoslovakia then Poland, it was only a matter of time before Britain was forced to intervene. Eddie signed up. Before he was even asked, all of the men from his boarding school in Carlisle did it together, mother has not forgiven Eddie and I don’t think I have either, we all know he isn’t going to be home by Christmas. But I know somebody has to stop Hitler and Eddie is no longer just my brother, he’s an eligible soldier.
