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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Roland Moore 2017

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Roland Moore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © August 2017

ISBN: 9780008204402

Version 2017-04-26

To Wanda, with all my love.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Extract from the diary of Connie Carter:

“It’s all gone wrong. I don’t know what to do. There was me with my stupid, perfect happy ending and it’s all crumbled to dust. Maybe I should have realised that I just wasn’t ‘good enough’.

But I never thought your whole life could just sort of fall apart like that. And fall apart so easily, either. Each bit of happiness falling like it’s in a row of dominoes or something. If she knew what happened, Mrs Gulliver would be pulling one of her sour old looks and saying something like “I knew she was rubbish, that Connie Carter”. She’ll be pointing fingers with the rest of the I-told-you-so-brigade when they all find out. Maybe she’d be right. There’s too many things that have happened to him, all because of me. He doesn’t deserve that.

The worst thing is that I don’t know where he is. If he’d said where he was going, even if it involved never wanting to see me again, at least I’d have known, wouldn’t I? I could cope with that, eventually. But I don’t even know if he’s still alive. No, can’t think like that. He is alive and I just hope he comes back. And it’s not like there’s anyone I can talk to about it, is there? No one I can ask. No one I can pour my heart out to.

Got to keep it a secret.

That’s why I started to write this diary. Never kept one before. And probably won’t keep this one going for long. See, where I come from, you don’t tend to write down your thoughts and feelings and stuff, in case someone finds it and uses it against you. I’d never have written things down in the children’s home. Last thing you want is someone mocking you and seeing that you’re not as tough as you’re making out. I can take care of myself. Always have done. But a lot of my mouth is just a front. It’s obvious really, I guess. But no point telling everyone, is there?

So this might be the only time I write this stuff down.

I feel on edge the whole time. I can’t settle. Certainly can’t sleep or eat more than the barest amount. Esther, the warden at the farm, has been understanding. She’s been nice. Not that she knows the truth. She thinks I’m ill. That’s because that’s the lie I told her. I couldn’t tell her the truth. Whole can of worms that would be, wouldn’t it?

That’s why the I-told-you-so-brigade don’t know nothing yet.

Best to keep it that way.

Best to keep the big old secret. Isn’t it?

But the trouble is, I can’t just stay indoors pretending that I’m ill. I’m sure some of the other Land Girls have spotted me in Helmstead, walking aimlessly around. Or in the fields, where it looks like I’m enjoying a summer walk, lost in my thoughts. I just keep moping around, searching in vain for some clue. Keep thinking I’ll see him in the High Street or walking along a path somewhere. How can I search properly, though, when I’m sneaking around trying not to be seen?

This isn’t helping. I’m wasting time in here writing this, and it’s not helping.

Yeah, I’ve got to tell Esther what’s happened, at least. Tell her how I’ve blown it. Then I won’t have to pretend to be ill any longer. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. She might be able to help me. The Land Girls might be able to help me.

Time to let the dreadful cat out of the bag.

Chapter 2

A sparrow searched for an early-evening supper, hopping over train tracks on a remote stretch of countryside railway that cut through a valley. In this place there were no houses and the fields were overgrown with long grass. The grass was shorter only where twin slivers of darkened silver snaked across the landscape. As the bird pecked for a worm between sleepers, some scant twelve feet away from it, two men were busy working on the line. The bird was the only one that saw them. It didn’t care what they were doing as long as they didn’t come too close. To the casual observer, it looked as if the men were engaged in routine track maintenance. Perhaps tightening some bolts on a wooden sleeper or filing down roughness on the long, thin metal track itself. But if you looked more closely, you might realise that these men weren’t employees of the train company: you’d realise they were dressed in black; wearing balaclavas to obscure their faces. Not train-company uniforms.

The men were moving fast, jittery nervous movements almost parodying those of the bird, as they worked on the track. They glanced around at regular intervals to see if anyone was coming, checking the line for oncoming trains, the fields for any passing walkers. Somewhere in the sky – some distance away – there was the bumble-bee buzz of a Spitfire’s engine. Even this far-off sound made the taller man nervous. He craned his neck and started scanning the clouds. Would they be seen?

“Quick, hurry up –”, he urged.

“Don’t keep on!” The shorter man didn’t need telling. He knew they had to be quick. They both knew that the consequences of being caught would be severe. They couldn’t let that happen. But this bad-tempered exchange mirrored much of the conversation that they’d had since they’d set off in the early hours on this mission. Ever since the taller man had packed the red sticks into his holdall, along with the timing wire and detonator and they’d walked across the fields, feeling butterflies thumping around his belly.

The short man worked on the track while the taller one kept watch. The short man’s stubby fingers were trying to finish something that he’d been shown only once the night before. He hooked a pair of red wires around the metal bolts that fixed the device to the sleeper, trying to remember how the contraption should work. Was that right? It had looked a lot easier when he had been shown this in the woods around the camp fire, the convivial laughter of his friends spurring him on to think that this would be a great victory for their cause. He felt the pressure to get this right, but pressure was something he didn’t respond well to.

The tall man sank to his knees, craning his ear near to the track.

“I don’t know if I can hear a train.”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s not due yet. Shut up, I’m doing it as fast as I can.” The shorter man increased the pace, stripping the ends of a wire with a pair of pliers. There shouldn’t be a train for forty minutes. They’d planned this well so that they would have time to plant the device and get away before it came.

The short man finished his work and indicated he was ready. The taller man delved into the canvas holdall. Carefully he produced the explosives: a bundle that looked like red seaside rock bound with thick, black tape. The shorter man was sweating now in the evening sun as he laid the sticks on the track. He turned them upwards so he could easily stick the wires into the detonator charge that was already in place, his hand shaking from nerves. The back of his neck hurt, a tension headache on its way. He wished he’d paid better attention around the camp fire, when this had looked so easy and straightforward.

“Careful.” The tall man was good at making redundant and obvious statements. “Don’t blow your hand off.”

The short man scowled at him through his balaclava. “The clock. Give me the clock.”

The tall man pulled the alarm clock out from the holdall and handed it over.

The short man fumbled it and it fell onto the tracks – the chimes clanging, the first seconds of an early-morning alarm call. He retrieved it, checked it wasn’t damaged and put it into place. Finally the short man pressed the exposed wire into the putty around the connection.

“Thirty-eight minutes?” he asked.

“Thirty-eight minutes. Yeah. The train will be here then,” the tall man confirmed, checking his own watch. The Brinford to Helmstead line was run with regimented efficiency, but even if the train was late, it wouldn’t matter. The track would still be wrecked and the train would derail. It’s just that, if possible, their masters wanted the train to be caught in the explosion as well. The two men hadn’t asked any questions as to why but they assumed it was to garner maximum exposure in news stories. Maximum disruption and casualties.

Soon they had finished their grim task and were scampering off the tracks and across the fields to the seclusion of a copse of conifer trees. The tall man and the short man barely exchanged a goodbye as they went their separate ways. Once on his own, the short man stopped to breathe properly for the first time, the tension in his neck causing his temples to erupt in pain. But it didn’t matter. He’d done it and he’d got out in time. He hoped no one had seen.

Back on the tracks, the bird hopped near to the explosive charges, searching the earth that had been disturbed by the men’s boots. After a moment, it flew off to find dinner elsewhere. It had no idea what would happen in thirty-seven minutes time.

Connie Carter’s legs were attracting attention.

Of course, most of the time she was used to this, because men would give her a top-to-toe appraisal whether she wanted it or not; their eyes darting quickly, sometimes almost imperceptibly, especially if they were married men, from her long black hair, past her high cheekbones and soulful brown eyes all the way across her ample bosom and down to her toes. Connie knew that most of the time this perusal was motivated by lust or at least an appreciation of the female form. But today, Connie’s legs were attracting attention for another reason. It was because her feet were leaving a trail of thick mud on the train platform. The railway guard – a red-faced jowly old codger with a whistle hanging from his lips like a forgotten Woodbine – scowled at the clods of dirt falling from Connie’s boots.

“I’ve been workin’ in the fields, ain’t I?” Connie answered his unspoken question, her incongruous East-End voice cutting through the countryside air with the shrillness of an air-raid siren.

The guard shook his head and walked down the platform.

“Someone’s got to sweep it up,” he muttered. “That’ll be me, won’t it?”

Connie didn’t have the energy to argue. Her back was sore and her feet were throbbing from digging all day at Brinford Farm, where she and some of her fellow Land Girls had been seconded. She’d been at it since six in the morning and now it felt that even her blisters had blisters. Connie just wanted to get back to Helmstead: the picturesque village on the edge of the Cotswolds, where she was usually billeted as a Land Girl. The twin delights of a hot bath and her husband would be waiting. Helmstead had been home for the last year – a place where she was finally part of a family, of sorts. A place where she’d married Henry Jameson one month ago.

Connie and Henry were an odd match in a lot of ways. She was a worldly young woman from Stepney in the East End; he was a naive vicar from the countryside, a man who had never even been to London. Some likened it to a wild cat marrying a tortoise. She’d try to shrug off the disapproving looks from the older members of the village; those who thought she wasn’t good enough to be a vicar’s wife. But the sour expressions and the comments hurt Connie deeper than she’d ever let on. Sometimes she’d close the bathroom door and confused thoughts would race through her head. What if they were right? Why couldn’t they just accept her? She was trying her best. All she wanted to do was fit in. There was a nagging feeling that she didn’t belong here and that one day she’d have to accept that fact and move on. It was difficult to put down real roots when you felt they were going to be ripped up soon.

But when she could shut those thoughts out of her mind and focus on herself and Henry, she liked the stability he brought into her life. She thought that perhaps he liked the spark that she brought into his. Perhaps her lust for life inspired Henry. Certainly his sensible ways tempered her from getting into too much trouble. Certainly, in a lot of ways, they would infuriate each other and Connie was mindful never to push him too far. If he didn’t want to do something spontaneously, Connie would back down. She knew she wasn’t an easy fit for the world of village cricket and afternoon teas at the vicarage and she didn’t want to risk losing that. So she’d keep her thoughts to herself while secretly thanking her lucky stars that such a warm, decent man had taken her to his heart. It was too good to be true and she had to pinch herself for the chocolate-box turn that her life seemed to have taken.

Since meeting Henry, Connie rarely thought of those times before she joined the Women’s Land Army; shutting out those dark bedsit days and endless nights. It had been a different time. A life that she hoped she’d never have to go back to.

Connie’s thoughts were broken as a rough, wooden broom ran over her boots.

“Oi, do you mind?” Connie spluttered.

The old guard was sweeping the platform with an irritated staccato motion, sending clods over the side onto the track, where they would be someone else’s problem.

“Disgraceful,” the guard replied, without dignifying Connie with eye contact. “Brinford won silver in Best Rural Station last year. I don’t need this clutter on me concourse.”

“There is a war on,” Connie muttered, not giving a damn for his concourse. What was a concourse anyway? The guard continued along the platform, the wide broom head scything a path through the waiting passengers.

Suddenly Connie felt a tap on her back. She turned around, her mouth ready to unleash some angry words on any do-gooder. So what if her boots were muddy? She probably had dirt in her hair and was enveloped in the unmistakable perfume of cow dung too. But it was a friendly face that greeted her. Joyce Fisher was smiling at her. Mid-twenties, a little older than Connie, Joyce was stoic and sensible, with a sunny surface. She was a woman committed to patriotism and doing her bit to win the war. After all, that was all Joyce had to cling onto, wasn’t it? She’d lost so much and all the time the war was raging it stopped her dwelling on the thoughts of loss in her own head. The family gone forever in Coventry. If the war ever ended, then Connie suspected that Joyce would find the silence hard to deal with.

“I thought I was going to miss the train,” Joyce said, her soft eyes and sensible permed hair a welcome and reassuring sight.

“There’s no sign of it yet,” Connie replied. “Still, doubt it’ll be late.”

Joyce sighed in relief, unflappable as always. She handed Connie a small greaseproof-paper packet. “Cheese and an apple,” Joyce said, by way of explanation. She’d waited behind at Brinford Farm as the farmer’s wife had offered some food for their journey back to Helmstead. Joyce was worried that, despite the woman’s kindness, she would take so long to wrap it all up that Joyce would miss the train. Not to mention the next one. “But I didn’t want to be rude and just walk off.”

Connie thanked Joyce and they opened their wrappers. Connie bit into her apple, wrapping the cheese back up for later. She knew Henry might like a bit of that.

The guard stopped his sweeping and eyed them suspiciously. “Hope you’re not making any more mess,” he muttered, moving with surprising speed back towards them. How could he have heard them unwrap a package at that distance?

“I’ve a good mind to give him what for,” Connie said under her breath. She’d always fought her own battles and would never back down from a scrap. But this time Joyce touched her arm, holding her back. Joyce believed it was better to pick your battles, not engage in every skirmish at once.

“I leave you for ten minutes and all sorts happen. What’s going on here?” Joyce asked.

Connie shook her head. It was nothing.

“That’s what you said when you smashed the pub window.” Joyce smiled.

Connie smiled at that memory too, a little embarrassed and amazed that she’d had the brass neck to do that. But the landlord had diddled them out of change one too many times. And he was a lecherous old sod, who made them all feel uncomfortable with his roving eyes. Henry had been annoyed about that, drifting into a sullen sulk for several days until Connie blurted out an apology. He’d given her a lecture about turning the other cheek. Connie had found herself drifting off as the words washed over her; annoyed that Henry was patronising her as if she was still a little girl at the children’s home.

In the early evening sun, the two weary friends stretched their aching backs and Connie ate her apple. Behind them, a poster warned housewives not to take the trains after four o’clock so that factory workers could use them. Another showed two women chatting, not realising that a sinister man in a hat and coat was ear-wigging. Careless talk costs lives. Some more RAF pilots from Brinford Air Base decamped on the platform, their bodies laden with kit bags and great-coats. Connie scanned all the faces on the platform. She and Joyce were the only two Land Girls heading back. But there was an assortment of other travellers – service men, factory workers, a policeman and a middle-aged woman, who was clutching the hand of a nine-year-old girl. The little girl, her blonde hair in ringlets in a style that had been popular ten years ago, had been crying. Connie noticed the snaking lines of old tears on her chubby face and the way she was sniffing as she tried to control the flow. Before Connie could look any more, a portly man obscured her view – his shirt stretched tight over his large belly like the tarred cloth around Finch’s haystack. The man’s eyes darted to the distance in search of the train. He wore a trilby hat and a camera dangled around his neck, resting on the cushion of his stomach.

Suddenly the guard blew his whistle and everyone perked up as the plume of smoke from the steam train was glimpsed from behind a hill. Slowly the train chugged into view and Connie forgot the other passengers on the platform. Now it was all about getting a seat in one of the carriages. She needed to sit down. And from the weary look on Joyce’s face, she did too. The two friends walked to the edge of the platform, trying to predict the position where the carriage doors would be. This was a routine that they had perfected since their secondment to Brinford. Each evening they would wait for the train. Each evening they would try their best to secure a seat in one of the crowded carriages. The train came to a halt, the smell of soot thick in the air. The passengers already on-board flowed out of the carriage doors like water from a colander. And, with the train vacated there was the relatively good-natured but nonetheless urgent rush of the new passengers to find a seat. Some soldiers held back, allowing Connie and Joyce to get on first. Connie smiled charmingly back – thank you, kind sirs – and then suddenly darted, with little hint of any ladylike grace, along the carriage corridor to find an empty compartment.

They ducked under an RAF flyer’s arms as he hoisted his kit bag up into the baggage rack and found themselves in an empty six-seat compartment. Mission accomplished! Connie and Joyce sat nearest the windows – until Joyce quickly changed her mind and sat next to Connie.

“Forgot, I don’t like going backwards.”

As the carriages filled up and the guard’s whistle became more impatient, Joyce asked Connie whether Henry would be at the vicarage when she got home. Connie didn’t know. Often Henry would cycle around the village in the evenings, administering succour and support to his parishioners.

“I told him, he wants to kick those needy old biddies into touch, he’s a married man now,” Connie said, partly to make Joyce laugh and partly to shock the middle-aged businessman who had entered their compartment. The businessman sat down and defensively rustled his newspaper open, a makeshift shield of the Times crossword to block out such coarseness for the duration of the journey.

The compartment filled up. The young girl who had been crying and her stern-looking mother entered. And then a fresh-faced young soldier arrived to make up the six. He sat down and studiously attempted to roll a cigarette for the first ten minutes of the journey. He obviously hadn’t been smoking long and was all fingers and thumbs, with more tobacco ending up in his lap than in the cigarette paper. Connie was itching to snatch it from him and do it herself, but figured that wouldn’t be the sort of thing a lady would do.

Joyce and Connie settled down for the journey as the train wheezed its way out of Brinford, the station guard diminishing to the size of a speck on the platform. He could be alone with his concourse now.

“Why are you still calling yourself Carter?” Joyce asked, breaking Connie’s idle thoughts. “Heard you introduce yourself twice today.”

“Had that name all me life. Not got used to being a Jameson yet, I suppose.” Connie shrugged. “Connie Carter’s got a ring to it.”

“She’s got a ring on her finger,” Joyce retorted.

Why hadn’t Connie been using Henry’s name? It was an odd thing for her to do. Married women happily took their husbands’ surnames. Secretly she knew that her explanation to Joyce was a lie. She didn’t use the name of Jameson because she didn’t believe it would last. Nothing ever did in her life. Part of her thought that her happy marriage would be a blip. Best not to get too comfortable with the luxury of Henry’s surname. Another part of her hated herself for hedging her bets and not fully committing. She should dive in rather than just dangling her feet in the pool. But that’s what came when you were buffeted from a lifetime of disappointment and rejection.

Connie shut out the thoughts and concentrated on the stern-looking woman and her tearful daughter. Connie offered a consoling smile to the girl, but the girl didn’t acknowledge it. Was she too upset to notice? Or was it fear making her reluctant to smile back?

“My John’s supposed to be on this train,” Joyce said, interrupting Connie’s thoughts. “But I didn’t see him on the platform.”

“Difficult to see anyone in that scrum, wasn’t it?” Connie offered.

John Fisher – an RAF flier – had been to the airbase in Brinford today and Joyce had been hoping to see her husband before they got back to Helmstead. He was Joyce’s rock – her childhood sweetheart and the only part of her family that she hadn’t lost in the brutal bombing of Coventry at the start of the war. It had been a lucky accident, which had meant they were in Birmingham on the night the bombs dropped. A sliver of serendipity that further cemented their relationship and their belief in their shared destiny together.

“Do you want to go down the carriages and find him?” Connie asked. “I’ll keep your seat.”

Joyce looked at the corridor outside their compartment. It was crammed with soldiers, pilots and factory workers. It would be nearly impossible to move down the train. Joyce decided to stay where she was. “I’m sure I won’t forget what he looks like if I don’t see him until Helmstead.”

The young soldier dutifully finished his roll-up with an audible gasp of satisfaction. But the victory was short-lived as he raised it to his lips and lit it; it promptly unrolled, dropping tobacco onto his trousers. He cursed and hastily patted his crotch to put out the burning embers before they scorched his uniform. Connie couldn’t resist letting out a small laugh. The boy looked back and smiled. He scooped up the tobacco and started to try again.

“Want me to do it?” she offered. Sod it if it wasn’t the sort of thing a lady did.

“Can you roll them?” the soldier said in surprise, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“No. But I can’t be worse than you, can I?”

Joyce nudged Connie to stop messing with the poor lad. “What? I’m just being friendly,” Connie said, under her breath. The middle-aged woman with the tear-streaked daughter shot her a disapproving look.

The soldier sucked in his cheeks and doggedly resumed his rolling.

The businessman already had a pipe in his mouth – unlit at the moment and being sucked on like a baby’s dummy as he contemplated the crossword.

The train snaked across the countryside. Fields of cows and fields of corn moved past the windows like frames at the flicks. The evening sun glinted low through the carriage windows, dappling the occupants with patchworks of light.

Connie entertained fragmented thoughts: Henry waiting with a cup of tea; Joyce joking in the fields with her; the snotty guard at Brinford station. The images washed over her in a hazy, comforting blur as the motion of the train and the evening sunlight flickered over her face. Sleep was a moment away.

The fields trundled by in a blur.

Connie tried to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to sleep now. She sat up, breathed deep and thought about Henry waiting at the vicarage with his warm smile and trusting eyes. He was a decent man, a man who loved her despite her faults. He loved her despite her troubled past. It was too good to be true, really, but she had to accept it and hope it wouldn’t turn out to be some massive joke.

She glanced at Joyce – who was biting her lip. Connie didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Joyce was thinking about. She was thinking about her man too.

Joyce was worried about John. He’d been to the base to finalise his leaving the RAF. It would be a big moment for both of them. Suddenly, John would be close to the home of Pasture Farm, where Joyce was billeted; he’d be finally safe from harm; but would it mean he’d lose his sense of purpose? Both Joyce and John held on to their roles in the war – as it made sense of the carnage and loss they had experienced in Coventry. Connie often wondered what Joyce would do when the war was over – if it ever finished. Would she feel lost without it?

But Connie was too tired to ask about such things tonight. A bath. A cuppa. And Henry. Those simple things were keeping her going.

So instead, Connie offered a less emotionally taxing conversation.

“I won’t miss this journey,” Connie said.

True, it was pleasant enough if you got a seat away from the scrum, but it still added a long journey to an already-long day in the fields.

“Me neither,” Joyce said, munching the cheese from her parcel. “Only good thing was not having to work with Dolores.”

“Don’t be ‘orrible. Just ‘cos she never says nothing.” Connie thought about the near-monosyllabic Dolores, who had joined them recently. But the thought drifted out of her head, sleep threatening to cover her.

“I wish Finch would pick us up sometimes,” Joyce said.

Connie wished he would to, as she bit her lip, trying to stay awake. Freddie Finch was the tenant farmer who lived in Pasture Farm. A ruddy-faced man with keen, smart eyes, he’d loaned out some of his Land Girls for the work on Brinford Farm. But despite having a tractor with a trailer that could easily give the girls a lift home, Finch wouldn’t stretch his meagre petrol ration to pick them up unless he had to. It was fair enough, but it didn’t stop Connie and Joyce from wishing.

Connie looked at the young girl again.

The whites of her mother’s knuckles were showing as she gripped the girl’s hand. Why was she holding on so tightly? That must hurt.

Connie offered a sympathetic smile to the girl. Nothing. She flashed one to the mother.

This time, she got a reaction. The stern-faced woman shot her a look that said stop staring and mind your own business.

This was like red rag to a bull. Connie didn’t avert her gaze.

The girl was looking at the floor.

“Is she all right?” Connie asked, poking her nose in even further.

Joyce looked around – this was the first she’d registered the young girl and her mother. She played catch-up quickly and registered Connie’s concern.

The mother frowned and shook her head – containing her fury at this interference.

“Of course she is.”

The soldier looked up from his rolling. The business man buried himself deeper in The Times.

“Yeah?” Connie asked the girl directly.

The girl raised her sad face, her eyes vulnerable and moist.

“What business is it of yours?” the mother asked Connie.

“Connie …” Joyce warned, about to tell her friend to pipe down.

But Connie wouldn’t let this lie. Maybe it was hard to let go when she saw something of herself in the haunted eyes of this youngster.

“It’s just that she seems –” Connie was about to say ‘sad’, but she would never finished the sentence.

BANNGGGGGGG!

There was a deafening bang from the front of the train, accompanied by the ear-splitting wrenching of metal. Everyone was jolted off their seats, the world folding in on itself. The businessman’s newspaper flew into Connie’s face as she fell forwards. And then there was a loud crunching noise from behind and the sound of twisting metal. Slowly, the compartment shook and rolled, tossing over and over. Bodies bounced around the carriage as the floor became the ceiling and back again. Connie felt herself sliding across the floor. Joyce’s elbow hit Connie hard in the neck as Joyce rolled on top of her. Connie could hear muffled screams. All the sounds were somehow distant, as if they had been muffled by cotton wool.

Connie thrust out a hand and grabbed the metal frame that secured the seats to the floor. With the other hand, she grabbed onto Joyce to try to stop them being tossed around the tumbling carriage.

The windows of the compartment shattered and there was a squeal of brakes. The outer door flung open and the young soldier was thrown into the air, rolling on the ceiling and then the floor, over Connie and Joyce, and finally spewing out of the opening to the outside world.

The businessman flew across the floor and hit the open door frame with a thud. Arms and legs and bodies intertwined as screams filled the air and the carriage tumbled.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Finally the nightmare seemed to end and the carriage came to juddering rest. It was almost the right way up again. The sounds suddenly became clearer. Screams. Connie slowly let go of the seat support and slid to the new floor. The first thing she focused on was the businessman’s pipe. It was inches from her nose, resting in a sea of diamond-like fragments of broken glass. The businessman himself was behind Connie, sitting in a heap of Saville Row tailoring and blood; shocked and confused, but probably all right.

The little girl was crying, her leg wedged under the seat. A seat that had been mangled almost flat in the crash. Her mother was face down on the floor, knocked unconscious.

Connie could hear her own heart thumping in her chest.

The taste of blood was in her mouth.

“What-?” She struggled to talk, but her words didn’t seem to come together; drunken sounds in her head.

Dust settled. Joyce looked up, her face bruised and slightly cut; her tight-permed-hair messed in all directions.

“Are you all right?” Connie finally managed to ask.

Joyce stared at her, as if she wasn’t hearing the words. She’d gone into shock.

“What happened?” Connie asked. “Joyce?”

Again, Joyce had no answers. Or even acknowledgement that her friend was talking to her.

Connie knew she wouldn’t get anything from her. She glanced towards the exterior door. Outside was grass. They had rolled down a bank and come to rest at the bottom of the incline. Connie got shakily to her feet, her balance slightly wobbly. She rubbed her neck and glanced quickly to check that Joyce wasn’t badly injured. She guided her shocked friend towards the exit, their boots crunching on the broken glass as if they were walking on fresh snow. With Connie’s help, Joyce jumped down onto the grass. It was a long drop without a platform. For some inexplicable reason, Connie saw an image of the guard back at Brinford station sweeping the platform. Or concourse, or whatever he called it.

“Flaming vandals,” he muttered in Connie’s head.

Joyce staggered a few feet across the grass, before falling softly onto her bottom. A soldier came over from another carriage to check she was okay and they sat together.

Still inside the carriage, Connie poked her head out and looked along the length of the carriage. Many passengers were dropping from their compartments onto the grass, where they struggled to come to terms with what had happened. Three-quarters of the train had been derailed and had tumbled down the bank, a wrecked and hissing snake in the long grass.

Connie put her head back into her compartment and turned her attention to the injured. The businessman was groggily coming round. He’d bitten through his lip in the crash. Connie reassured him that his injury wasn’t as bad as it looked. He might need a new shirt, though.

She helped him to the door and he jumped down onto the grass.

Next Connie found the mother. She was unconscious. Connie got close and listened to the woman. She was breathing. She was alive.

“Help me!” the little girl said, her leg trapped under the twisted seat.

“I’ll just get your mother first,” Connie replied, as she flung the woman’s arm around her shoulders and edged her towards the door. The dead weight was difficult to shift and Connie found herself buckling under the woman. Finally she managed to wedge her into the door opening and cry for help.

“I need some help! Someone come and help!”

Suddenly, behind her, a strange rustling noise attracted Connie’s attention.

She turned to the source of the noise. It sounded oddly familiar.

“Fire!” the little girl shouted. “Help me! It’s on fire!”

The whole corridor of the carriage outside their compartment was ablaze; thick black smoke billowing behind the glass. It wouldn’t be long before it broke through the door and engulfed the compartment itself.

The girl was struggling to free her leg from the metal of the seat. But it wouldn’t budge.

Connie tried to move the unconscious woman, who was wedged in the door. She realised she didn’t have time for any more niceties.

“Sorry, love.”

She put her boot behind the mother’s bottom and gave her a hefty shove through the door. The woman fell out of the door, landing unceremoniously on the grass with a dull thud.

Connie raced back over to the girl and pulled at the frame. It started to bend and yield, but still the leg was trapped.

Knowing that it wouldn’t help things if the girl panicked, Connie looked the girl in the eye.

“You’ve gotta move it as I try and pull the seat. Got it?”

The girl realised it was the only way. Connie smiled encouragingly.

The fire in the corridor behind Connie’s shoulder was getting more intense. She could feel the heat as the flames danced hungrily behind the glass partition.

“One, two, three,” Connie counted, and with all her strength she pulled at the metal frame at the same time the girl wiggled her ankle. With a jolt, the leg came free. Connie hauled the little girl to her feet. The leg seemed unable to support her weight. It may have been broken or just bruised – Connie didn’t have time to check but ran with the girl’s arm around her towards the salvation of the open door.

The corridor door behind them suddenly exploded as the fire broke the glass.

Invigorated by the fresh air of the compartment, smoke and flames exploded into the space. Connie didn’t have time to hang around. She pushed the girl through the opening to the outside.

And a moment later, framed by an inferno, cloaked in thick black smoke, Connie stood in the opening herself.

The little girl looked up at the woman who’d saved her. She called for her to jump. But the smoke, billowing from the carriage suddenly covered Connie, obscuring her from view. The flames were raging in the carriage, pumping out more and more dark smoke. The little girl squinted.

She couldn’t see if Connie Carter had made it.

Chapter 3

A tractor with a hay trailer stood in the country lane. The casualties from the train disaster: the walking wounded and those too shocked to speak, were hauling their aching and battered bodies up onto the trailer. Freddie Finch, a large, avuncular man in his late forties, was helping them. Although ‘helping’ was a generous term for just telling them to mind they didn’t snag anything on the lip of the trailer as they crawled up. Finch wouldn’t stretch himself to help anyone physically, on account of his bad back; a condition that had oddly resisted any medical diagnosis and which seemed to move to different areas of his spine according to his memory.

“Mind your step. That’s it,” he said with a nervous chuckle as a young soldier climbed up. Finch glanced back at the surreal sight of the train and its carriages sprawled across a large area of grassland. The fire fighters had arrived and were trying to extinguish a blaze in the middle section. Some distance away, a large group of passengers were huddled together, being treated by a few village doctors and nurses. Some soldiers were building a pile of luggage as they recovered what they could from the wrecked train.

“I was just saying I wished you’d pick us up. And here you are.”

Finch looked round to the sound of the voice. It was Joyce Fisher, bruised and suffering some small lacerations to her face, but otherwise all right. She’d recovered from the shock of what had happened and found her voice. She had a hair pin in her mouth and was busy tidying her hair as she walked towards the trailer.

“I’m like the genie of the lamp.” Finch giggled.

“Mind you, didn’t think I’d have to go through all this to get a lift.”

Finch beamed a large grin. “Thank heavens you’re all right. That’s the main thing, eh?”

He plucked her from the ground and spun her round – chuckling with relief.

Joyce winced. Finch put her down awkwardly.

“Bruises.” Joyce grimaced.

“Sorry, got carried away!” Finch chuckled. Realising that he was being watched by rows of blank eyes on the trailer, he placed his thick fingers on his lower back as it twinged with pain. “Overdone it.”

Frederick Finch gave bed and board to Joyce – as well to Esther Reeves, the Land Girls’ warden, her teenage son and three other Land Girls. Within the boundaries of the Hoxley estate, Pasture Farm sported a homely and quaint little cottage in its vast expanse of fields and outbuildings. Before the war, it had just been home to Finch and his young son Billy, but now Billy had gone away to fight and the house was rammed full of new people, the vibrant chatter and noise making it once more not just a house but a home. Finch enjoyed having the house feel so alive, full of strangers who became friends. It reminded him of before. It reminded him of when his wife was there, the fire roaring as she laid on feasts for their friends, a house full of laughter.

As Finch watched Joyce get up onto the hay trailer, he poked a stubby finger in the air and counted how many people he had on board. Joyce hid her amusement that Finch’s mouth moved while he counted.

Reaching a tally in his head, Finch frowned. Someone was missing.

“Where’s Connie?”

Nearer the wreckage, the young nine-year-old girl with blonde curls was wrapped in a blanket as the village doctor, Dr Wally Morgan, checked her leg for injury. He was a well-meaning but often drunken man in his fifties; a man unused to having to use his limited medical knowledge on such a scale.

“How’s that?” Wally asked, manipulating her ankle.

The girl winced. He’d got his answer.

“Point your toes to the ground. Can you do that, dear?”

The girl tried her best. Her foot was moving fairly well. “Hurts a bit, I think.”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Wally said, tapping her shoulder by way of closure as he got to his feet. He plucked up his medical bag, ready to move to the next patient. “Probably just a bad bruise. It’ll go a pretty old purple over the next day or so, I’ll wager.”

Wally Morgan scanned the huddles of patients and helpers, deciding where to go next. This was a lot more activity than he was used to as a village doctor. He was already feeling that he’d reward himself with a drink or two tonight. This felt like proper war work, a step above looking at Mrs Gulliver’s bunions. Wanting an easy win, he managed to ignore a man with a twisted leg and set off to see a young man who had a bleeding temple.

As she’d stood in the wrecked doorway, smoke billowing out around her, Connie Carter had felt the searing heat of the fire on her back. It felt as though it was already burning though her Land Army sweater; angry orange tendrils trying to fry her skin. The heat could overcome her at any time and topple her, unconscious, back into the burning carriage. That would be the end of it. As she stood there, it only took a fraction of a second, but for Connie the moment stretched out forever. She gripped the sides of the doorway, her boots crossing the threshold. A clump of mud fell from one boot. Dimly she thought of the station master at Brinford with his broom and his short temper.

“Mind you don’t mess up my burning train.”

A bloom of black smoke belched from the back of the carriage and engulfed Connie, pulled past her into the fresh air. There wasn’t enough air to breathe. Connie felt herself totter, woozy, losing focus. She steadied herself, blinking to try to clear her head. More smoke rushed past her. It was getting harder to breathe, the air dry and somehow thin. She tried to focus and force herself forward. But her fuzzy brain suddenly couldn’t work out which way was forward. Even though the opening was inches in front of her, she was disorientated and looking around for the way. But the black smoke was rushing past her, like a biblical plague of suited commuters. She couldn’t see anything, even though logic should have told her to follow the direction the smoke was heading in. Towards the air. But logic wasn’t working.

Connie swooned, almost fell. There was nothing left in her lungs. She couldn’t see and all she could hear was the rush of smoke and the crackle of burning wood somewhere in the distance.

A gust of wind saved her life.

Outside the carriage, the wind poked a brief hole in the billowing blackness that was exiting the door. For a moment, Connie could see a soldier sitting on the grass in the distance, a man in shock being treated by a nurse.

She knew she had to head in that direction.

The flames staged one last attempt to grasp her, but Connie launched herself from the doorway, following the brief glimpse of light she’d seen. Her lungs were gasping as she fell in a heap on the ground. Looking behind, she saw tall flames consuming the carriage, dancing, blowing the glass out from the windows. One second longer and she would have been overcome with smoke and she would have collapsed into that inferno.

It had been a narrow miss.

Connie sobbed in relief and took hungry mouthfuls of air. Each breath made her hack up the acrid smoke that had tried to take over her lungs. It took several minutes before she could speak, and even as she got her voice back, the coughing would be there to remind her of her lucky escape.

Now Connie Carter sat on the grass drinking tea from a mug. Some villagers had lit a fire and were boiling a kettle to provide hot drinks for the wounded. The tea was weak and milky but it hit the spot. Connie noticed the young girl from the carriage and moved over towards her.

“How you feeling?” Connie asked.

“All right. Your face is all black.”

Connie laughed. She hadn’t seen herself, but she supposed that it would be. Certainly a thin smear of greasy soot covered her arms and hands. It probably caked some of her face too. She offered the mug. “Want some tea? It’s weaker than a kitten, but it hits the spot.”

The girl shook her head. “Not allowed tea. But thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Margaret Sawyer,” the girl replied.

“I’m Connie Carter. Well, Connie Jameson. Keep forgetting. Married.” Connie reached into her pocket and pulled out the parchment parcel. She opened it up, considered eating it, but then offered the piece of cheese to the girl. “Do you good to eat something, you know.”

The girl looked uncertain. Connie wondered whether she had been told not to take things from strangers.

“It’s all right. Your mum’s over there. And I’m a vicar’s wife.”

Margaret overcame her reticence and took it. She gobbled it down, taking another chunk before the first one was swallowed. Connie was surprised at how ravenous she seemed. “Blimey, doesn’t your mum feed you?”

“She’s not really my mum,” Margaret said.

But before Connie could enquire further, they were interrupted. It was the portly man with the trilby hat and the camera that Connie had seen at Brinford station.

“Hello, ladies,” he wheezed. “I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald.”

“About time someone told us what was going on,” Connie replied. “Why did the train come off the tracks like that, then?”

Roger was slightly wrong-footed. “No, I was hoping to ask you some questions.”

“Well I don’t know nothing,” Connie said.

Margaret, with a mouthful of cheese, stifled a giggle at their exchange.

“They think there was an explosive on the line,” Roger said in a hushed voice, hoping that the explanation might enable him to get on with his line of questioning.

“What, the Germans?”

Roger didn’t know. The bomb could have been planted by Nazi sympathisers or communists or any group allied with the German cause. There had been several instances of terrorism in Helmstead and the surrounding areas in the last few months. The air base at Brinford had been bombed mercilessly in a raid by German bombers, and while that action wasn’t terrorism, most locals thought someone had tipped off the secret location of the base to the enemy. And a sympathiser had even been shot dead at Hoxley Manor when Lady Ellen Hoxley had discovered him transmitting secret messages from the stables. The enemy was closer than anyone wanted …

Roger Curran explained that an explosive had been detonated as the train engine went across the track. The bomb must have been on a timer. It would have been common knowledge that, due to its proximity to the air base, the evening Brinford train would have had a large number of military personnel on board.

Connie hid her shock. Part of her had hoped the crash had been the result of a random accident. A rock on the line or something. It was terrifying to think that someone, or some group, was behind it. Terrifying that it was an act of war.

“Anyway, tell me what happened to you,” Roger said, pulling out a small notebook. He licked the end of his pencil and poised it over the page to write. Connie didn’t understand why people licked pencils. What was the point of that?

Connie wasn’t sure she wanted to tell the story, playing down any suggestion that she had been heroic. But, despite her efforts at modesty, Margaret piped up:

“She saved my life. She saved the lives of everyone in our compartment. She was brilliant.”

Connie blushed. She tried to downplay it, but was reluctantly forced to reveal that this was more or less the truth. She related the tale of what happened and Roger took a few pages of notes, his smiles of encouragement becoming more frequent. He sensed this was a good story for his paper. It might even give him his first front page since the Land Girls’ Tractor Race. He ended by asking Connie where she lived. Proudly Connie told him that she lived at the vicarage with her husband.

“This will be a lovely piece for the paper. ‘Vicar’s Wife Saves Lives’,” Roger said. Then he turned to the young girl. “And where do you live?”

“I don’t know if I should say,” Margaret replied, offering a worried glance in the direction of where the middle-aged woman was.

“It’s all right,” Connie encouraged.

“Jessop’s Cottage,” Margaret admitted, hesitantly.

As Roger tried to place it, Margaret informed him that it was in the middle of a valley, miles from anywhere. The nearest landmark was Panmere Lake and Helmstead was the nearest town. Roger couldn’t place it.

“Don’t worry. Nobody knows it. Nobody comes there.”

“Not even your friends?” Connie asked.

Margaret shook her head quickly, keen to close down all these intrusive questions.

As Connie mulled this over, Roger unhooked his camera from around his neck and started to frame a shot of Connie and Margaret.

“Perhaps, if you don’t mind getting closer …?” Roger said, wafting his hand for them to scrunch together.

Connie and Margaret shuffled closer over the grass – Margaret still wrapped in her blanket. They smiled weary smiles for the camera.

Roger clicked the trigger. “Cheese!”

He let the camera bounce back onto his ample stomach.

“Thank you, ladies.”

And then he tipped his hat and moved to another group. Even though he knew their story would take some topping. “Excuse me, I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald.”

Connie turned to Margaret. “How you feeling?”

Margaret looked subdued and thoughtful. Connie tried to cheer her up. “Here, I let him take my photograph and I was covered in soot.”

“It’s all right. So was I.” Margaret laughed. A nurse came over and helped Margaret to her feet.

“Your mum is being taken to the hospital. She’ll be fine. But we need you to come as well,” the nurse said.

Margaret looked back at Connie. The unhappy look had returned to the young girl’s face. Connie felt concerned. What was she going back to? Why did no one ever go to the little girl’s house?

“Thanks again,” Margaret said.

“Take care.” Connie watched the young girl as she was marshalled away. And then she was aware of Finch waving at her to get a move on. He wanted to leave now. Tipping the last remnants of her tea away, Connie picked herself up and scurried up the bank towards the waiting tractor.

When she reached it, the trailer was nearly full and people were shivering as dusk turned to night. As she hauled herself up, Connie was surprised to see John Fisher sitting next to Joyce. It turned out he had been on the train after all, squeezed into a carriage further down, just as Joyce had predicted. John had become a navigator for the RAF until he was shot down in France. The experience had been traumatic and he had left active duty soon after his recovery. Now he worked at Brinford Air Base as a clerk, his flying days over (to Joyce’s immense relief).

“I saw Finch before I saw Joyce,” he admitted.

“Flaming cheek,” Joyce joked.

“He probably blocked her out. Like one of them eclipse things,” Connie said.

Finch, at the front of the tractor with a starting handle, popped his head up. “’Ere! You can walk if there’s any more of that.”

Connie sat with Joyce and John as Finch cranked up the tractor.

It spluttered to life.

“Right, anyone not got a ticket? It’s tuppence each for the ride.” He chuckled, knowing full well that he was going to get a barracking for his cheek. But you couldn’t blame a man for trying.

“With your driving, you should be paying us!” Connie replied.

“One more insult and you’re out, Connie Carter!”

Everyone laughed, enjoying the catharsis of letting it out after the trauma they had faced. This was the Blitz spirit. You could bomb these people, derail their trains, take their homes, but they would still end up laughing, somehow.

The tractor set off on its bumpy and languorous journey back to Helmstead. And while others were looking back at the wreckage of the train as it faded into the distance, Connie was thinking about the young girl she had saved and hoping that she would be all right.

Connie strode through the village square as starlings swooped like Spitfires in the darkening sky. Her feet had gone numb from her heavy boots, but she dreaded taking them off in case she couldn’t put them on again. She had visions of her feet swelling up like barrage balloons as soon as she unstrapped them from their straining prisons.

There was light and laughter coming from the Bottle and Glass pub as she passed it. Two GIs were hanging around outside, smoking and drinking in the late-evening air. One of them gave Connie an approving glance, but Connie wasn’t in the mood for any harmless flirty chit-chat. Not tonight. After what she’d been through, she just wanted to get home.

The church stood on the horizon at the end of the village. And next to it was the small white cottage that she called home. Getting used to married life hadn’t been as easy as she’d hoped. Their courtship had been a whirlwind of fun and romance; Connie enjoying how Henry would get tongue-tied and embarrassed at her antics. But those playful differences that seemed attractively engaging during the carefree stages of their relationship, now were weighed down by the seriousness of her wedding vows. Couldn’t she be more responsible? Couldn’t he just loosen up a little? And one month in, they were still finding their roles in that marriage; both desperate to make it work, but both feeling out of their depth. Connie had no idea how a marriage was supposed to work. She was fumbling for the answers as she went along, while trying to fit into the new order. The regimentation of living with someone, respecting their routine. It was all new. Well, it was all new in that it mattered this time. She’d lived with a man before, but that was different. It was something she didn’t want to think about. It felt like sullying what she had with Henry to even think about that.

Added to this difficult process of discovery was the hardship of wartime. It was tough having to wake up and go to work before her new husband was even awake. Most days Connie would get out of bed at five, kiss her slumbering, groggy husband goodbye and then tip toe across the cold floorboards into the bathroom to change into her WLA uniform. She’d put on her shirt, strap her braces over her shoulders as she hauled her heavy britches up – all the while hoping she wouldn’t wake Henry. Then she’d grab something to eat and go out into the crisp dewy air, staring at the new day’s clouds and walk to Pasture Farm – the place she had lived with the other Land Girls before she got married.

But that would be tomorrow morning. For now, Connie had reached the front door of the cottage. The place she called home.

She pushed it open.

Henry Jameson was standing in the corridor. A young man with a flicked fringe, dog collar and a permanent air of endearing bewilderment. Henry looked surprised to see her. But he didn’t have any time for questions as Connie pressed him to the wall, sending a small engraving of Our Lord clattering off its hook to the floor in the process, and planted a smacker right on his lips.

“Gawd, I’ve missed you, ‘Enry,” she said. “Thought I’d never see you again.”

She was about to kiss him again when she noticed that three old women were also standing in the corridor. In their neat floral dresses, they looked shocked at the sight they were witnessing. All three clutched their handbags like protective talismans.

“I was just showing the ladies from the WI out,” Henry stammered.

Connie mustered up a smile that would befit her status as a vicar’s wife. “I ain’t seen him all day,” she muttered by way of explanation.

Henry opened the front door for Mrs Arbuthnott, Mrs Fisk and Mrs Hewson to make their way out. They left in constrained silence. Connie and Henry waved a cheery goodbye wave and when it was socially acceptable, Henry quickly closed the door.

And then Connie burst out laughing. The sound caught in her throat when she realised that she was laughing alone. Henry frowned and walked into the living room.

In a stilted atmosphere, Connie related the events of the train disaster as she chased the last remnants of sausage and cabbage from her plate. Henry ate his dinner and replied that he’d heard nothing about the crash, but then he had been trapped most of the evening with Mrs Arbuthnott, Mrs Fisk and Mrs Hewson discussing the morality of rationing. The two of them ate by candlelight, as they always did, the meal complimented by conversation about their days. But tonight, she felt like a scolded child.

For Connie, the evening meal was usually the highlight of her day: a chance to talk about their working days and share a laugh together, before going upstairs for a bath and bed. Neither of them had the energy to stay up late so normally they’d be wrapped in each other’s arms by nine or ten at the latest. But tonight, it was already half-ten because of the extraordinary events of the train crash.

And there was an awkwardness, a sombre reflective air in the room.

Connie couldn’t take any more. Feeling contrite for showing up Henry in the eyes in of his parishioners, she was also annoyed she was being put through this.

“I thought you’d be more pleased I wasn’t dead,” she said bluntly.

“Of course I am. Don’t even joke about that.”

“Well, why does it feel like I’m doing thirteen Hail Marys instead of enjoying my food?”

“There are ways of behaving,” Henry said through tight lips. He didn’t like confrontation. He just wished that his brash wife knew how to behave sometimes. “Couldn’t you be more cautious when you come in?”

“Perhaps you’d like me to make an appointment beforehand.” Connie got up, clanking her cutlery onto the plate.

Henry grabbed her wrist. She’d been grabbed by other men, forced back into her seat. But this was different. He wasn’t holding her tightly, just enough to stop her in her tracks. He looked up at her with imploring eyes.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I don’t focus on what’s important. You’re alive and I should be thanking God for that.”

Connie sat back down and cleared her throat.

Despite their differences, she was grateful that this was her reward: a caring, handsome man who adored her – for the most part. It was her reward for all the cold, lonely nights she’d spent growing up in the orphanage, wondering where her mother was. Not that she would have recognised her because Connie never knew her mother, having been abandoned in the porch of a Stepney church at the age of three months. Being brought up in the orphanage wasn’t unpleasant, but its rigid discipline and work ethic made Connie yearn to break the rules and express herself. Mr and Mrs Palmer, who ran the place for the Borough of Tower Hamlets, never beat any of the children. Instead extra chores were given by way of punishment. It wasn’t a bad place, but with thirty-two children in one large house, Connie missed the warmth of a family’s love. Now she was the sole focus of Henry’s attention and didn’t have to compete with anyone.

“Good sausages,” Henry commented, finishing his dinner.

Connie couldn’t help but laugh. The relief of something trivial and light after a day of turmoil. She told him that Farmer Finch had given them to her. In fact, they got most of their meat and eggs from the farm, with Freddie Finch ensuring that all his girls were well-fed and watered, ‘top ups’ to their government-approved rations.

“I wonder if we should be making such liberal use of the farm, though,” Henry finished.

Connie would have suspected that Henry’s discussion about the morality of rationing with the three old witches might have prompted this, but the truth was she had heard rumbles of this argument before. Should they be given special treatment in the form of extra food when the majority of people adhered to strict rationing? Henry was a fair-minded man who believed in equal treatment during times of war and this preferential treatment clearly made him feel uncomfortable. Especially when some of his sermons were rallying cries to abandon the black market and make do with what you were given.

“Perk of working on a farm, innit?” Connie said, eager to close the conversation down. She was too tired to have this debate tonight. Too tired for any more friction. The last thing she wanted was to be talking about sausages after what she’d been through.

“I know, but-” Henry squirmed slightly. “And don’t think I’m not grateful, but I just think that any extra we get, we should perhaps get by our own means.”

Connie asked what he meant by that. “What, hunt for sausages ourselves? You do know they don’t roam around like that in the wild.”

Henry laughed, despite himself.

“I just meant that if we, say, caught a rabbit ourselves then it’s an extra bounty from the Lord. I wouldn’t feel guilty about that.”

“I ain’t got time to catch any rabbits, what with digging ditches all day,” Connie said, clearing the plates. “And you wouldn’t have the first idea what to do.”

“You don’t think I could catch one?” Henry asked.

Connie regretted saying it. It had slipped out before she could stop it. The perils of having an easy mouth and a tired brain. And now, he was glaring at her again. Well done, Connie. First she’d shown him up in the community and now she was emasculating him. Just when things had quietened down again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“You jolly well did. But I could indeed.”

Henry simmered. He could catch a rabbit! He knew he could. Couldn’t he? He wondered if Connie really thought he was clueless in the ways of hunting and fishing. Didn’t she think he could do proper manly pursuits? He stared with sudden loathing at his neatly ironed cuffs and the genteel surroundings of doilies and oil paintings. And Henry Jameson made a silent vow to himself. He’d prove that Connie was wrong. He’d show her.

Margaret Sawyer had received an even rockier homecoming. Instead of showing relief that Vera and Margaret were all right after their ordeal, Michael Sawyer vented fury and frustration at how stupid they had been to take the train. Vera usually got a bus from Brinford to near Jessop’s Cottage. How could they put themselves at risk by getting on a train packed with servicemen? Margaret had often seen Michael angry, but this tirade was a new benchmark in furious indignation. Even Vera had been taken aback. Margaret assumed that Michael didn’t know how to show he cared, so he shouted to let out his feelings. She wished he didn’t shout all the time.

Now, after Vera had gone for a lie-down, Margaret was the sole focus for his still considerable anger.

She was being scolded by him for taking the cheese from the woman at the train crash. Michael was grey-haired and tall, with gaunt features and a stick-like appearance. A bitter and shrill man, Michael Sawyer liked things done a certain way. His dinner had to be ready at a certain time every day. Bath days would be Tuesday and Friday. Margaret knew that something was wrong with him, some illness of the mind, although she didn’t know what. It meant that he rarely strayed far from the house, making his wife responsible for running errands and going to the town. He also seemed very suspicious of outsiders, always talking of people being ‘out to get him’. Margaret knew the word ‘recluse’ and knew that that was what Michael Sawyer was, but she didn’t know the full extent of his mental problems. Michael would spend his days in his shed or working their plot of land for vegetables. He didn’t seem to have any friends or outside interests.

As he raged, Margaret knew from bitter experience that it was quicker and easier not to argue; just let him pour it all out and burn himself out.

His face was close to Margaret’s and she could smell his bad breath as he spat his anger at her. He’d stopped talking about taking cheese from a stranger and was focusing his anger on the brazen woman who had given it to her. According to the reports from his wife, Connie was some sort of trollop.

“You don’t take extra. You don’t know where it came from. Your mother said she had lipstick like a tart.”

“She was just being nice,” Margaret stammered.

“Your mother said she poked her nose in!”

“She saved our lives.”

“Your mother would have looked after you!”

Margaret couldn’t take any more. She desperately wanted to snap and shout: ‘Stop calling her my mother. She’s not my mother and you’re not my father!’ But she knew she’d regret such a spectacular outburst and it would just prolong the punishment that was inevitably coming. Far better to just get it over with, go through the motions.

Let him burn himself out.

“Go to the place!” he fumed, brandishing his hand as if he was about to strike her. Margaret knew that it wasn’t the right time to make a stand, so she obediently scurried to the ‘place’. This was what they called the cupboard under the stairs. And it was somewhere where Margaret spent a lot of time. She’d be locked in there, in the dark, to ‘think about what she’d done’ sometimes for hours at a time. She’d eaten meals in the cupboard, tried to read a book by candle-light in there. The screws on the woodwork of the door had become as familiar as the things in her bedroom.

Margaret went into the cupboard. Michael closed the door behind her and he slipped the bolt across. “Stay there and think about it,” he thundered through the door as he stomped away back to the dining table to finish his meal.

Margaret sat in the dark, cramped and lonely. She stared at the door, the missing section of skirting board on the floor, the collection of coats hanging from the hooks. It was usually a time of resigned sadness and usually it would overwhelm Margaret Sawyer with tears. But this time she didn’t cry.

Because this time she was thinking about Connie Carter.

Chapter 4

“Ah, doesn’t she look like Betty Grable?”

Finch giggled as he looked at the picture of Connie in The Helmstead Herald. Connie winced in embarrassment. The photograph showed her with the girl Margaret Sawyer, Connie’s soot-smeared smile a mix of bemusement and shock at the events that had just occurred. A streak of dirt ran down the side of Connie’s face. Margaret was looking sullenly at the camera, wrapped in her blanket, clearly not quite registering what was happening.

“I think I’ll pin this up in the kitchen to inspire the rest of you lot,” Finch announced to the room. Connie and Joyce were drinking tea, waiting for lunch, along with their fellow Land Girls young Iris Dawson and new arrival Dolores O’Malley. The kind-hearted warden, Esther Reeves, was standing at the stove stirring a huge pan of parsnip soup.

“No, you blinking won’t,” Esther stormed.

“Why not? It’s my kitchen,” Finch replied.

“’Cos it’s me what spends most time in here. No offence, Connie, love. It’s just I don’t want to be reminded about that awful crash all the time.”

Connie couldn’t blame her. The train crash had resulted in four casualties – including the young soldier who’d been trying to roll a cigarette. And over twenty other people had ended up in hospital with various injuries. Connie didn’t want to be reminded of it either.

“I’ll put it away, then,” Finch grumbled. “Still who’d have thought? She might get the George Cross for this, you know.”

“You’re making me cross,” Esther said, throwing him a look. Finch knew when it was best to let things drop. He pulled himself out of his chair at the head of the farmhouse table, took the newspaper and left the room.

“Also he’s brought seven copies of the thing,” Esther whispered to the girls. “He’s more proud of what you’ve done, Connie, than anything his own son ever did. Tragic, really.”

Connie felt awkward. She broke the tension by asking when the soup would be ready. Esther checked the taste one final time, indicated her approval and asked for Joyce to pass her the bowls. She ladled out the hot soup and handed it around. Dolores gave everyone a chunk of potato bread for dipping and everyone sat eating in hungry and appreciative silence. It would fill their bellies for the afternoon of digging ahead.

Connie had had enough of the photograph and the article to last her a lifetime. The newspaper had only come out yesterday but already Henry had talked about getting it framed and putting it on the wall somewhere in the vicarage. He was trying to patch things up after their recent arguments and she was touched by his efforts. Especially as she’d seen the way he’d grimaced when he’d read that she’d used her maiden name in the article.

“I just said it out of habit,” she offered weakly. It was some relief that Henry didn’t want to talk about it. With tight lips, he said it didn’t matter, when it obviously did. Connie wanted to explain. But what could she say? She used her maiden name out of habit? Because it felt more comfortable? Because she was subconsciously wondering if one day she’d go back to it?

Instead he’d busied himself with celebrating his wife’s heroism. But then he’d let slip something that perhaps made everything worse again –

“This will convince people you’re not just out for yourself,” he’d idly said.

Connie shot him a look as he instantly regretted his choice of words; wishing he could somehow suck them back in.

“Who’s saying I’m out for myself?” Connie had stormed.

“Well …”

Henry was forced to sheepishly admit that some of his older parishioners weren’t very charitable in their views of his wife. They were suspicious of Connie’s motives in marrying the young vicar. They spoke disapprovingly about her past, even though they knew nothing about it and were making most of the supposed ‘facts’ up. Connie immediately knew the people he was talking about.

“It’s those three old biddies from the WI, isn’t it?” she thundered.

Henry sheepishly agreed. But before she went off on one and wrecked both their evenings, Henry stated that he always stuck up for Connie against any slight they threw.

“What slights? There are other slights? Oh, this gets worse,” Connie said.

“You know how they are,” Henry stammered. “All set in their ways.”

“The way they carry on, you’d think I turned up to evensong in me knickers,” Connie said. Despite her tough exterior, she was hurt by what people thought of her. She was especially hurt by what Henry thought of her. It was as if the naysayers didn’t think she’d stick at her marriage were convinced she’d break Henry’s heart. She was sure that some of them were keeping a tally of how many days they’d been married, waiting in anticipation for the break-up. And she knew he’d secretly like her to get on with it and behave as he thought a vicar’s wife should.

The fact was that small-minded people would always judge her.

“If you turn up to evensong in your knickers, even I’d find that hard to defend.” He smiled. “But I’d appreciate the view.” He was making an effort again, even though he’d run a million miles if she actually did it.

Connie looked at the newspaper article on the table.

She thought of the finger-pointers reading it and judging – and she decided that she didn’t want to see it anymore. Henry agreed to keep it out of sight but he’d put it in a scrapbook. He was proud of his wife. He knew they’d look back on it with pride in their later years. This comment gave Connie heart. He saw this as a long-term commitment. He was willing to work at it.

In Finch’s kitchen, Connie mopped up the last of her soup with her bread. Joyce eyed Finch, who was draining the dregs of his bowl directly into his mouth. “Are you helping us this afternoon?”

Finch looked sheepish. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

“Tea towel,” Esther snapped.

But Finch ignored her. He shook his head at Joyce’s question, tapped his nose and chuckled. “No, I’ve got a more pressing appointment, heh.”

Joyce looked at Esther for an explanation. But Esther shrugged.

“Search me. I don’t keep his diary. And I know it’s best not to ask.”

Connie glanced at the clock and mentally started to count down the hours until she could return to her home and her husband. Even though there was a war on, and even though she and Henry had frequent arguments, Connie felt the happiest she had ever felt.

As soon as the school bell rang, Margaret Sawyer burst out of school with an unusual keenness to get home. She barely had time to shout goodbyes to her friends as she legged it over the playground and out of the gate. Running past the village square, Margaret dodged a couple of GIs, who were making their way along the street. She ran past Mr Jeffries’ sweet shop, a place where she usually liked to dawdle looking at the tasty confections in the window and imagining her perfect selection, and down the hill past a row of terraced houses. Then she was off over a field of long grass and down a ravine by a small stream, after several miles coming to a small thatched cottage amid a cluster of fields like a single flower sewn onto an eiderdown. This was home. Jessop’s Cottage, although Margaret wished she was back at her proper home in the East End of London. But she knew she couldn’t go back. Her real mum was dead.

The cottage was a place remote enough from the village that no one came here. And that was how Michael and Vera Sawyer liked it. He would often rail against the conspiracies that he saw in every shadow; the untrustworthiness of human behaviour. Margaret let these rants pass over her head, failing to understand how he could get so riled over things that were probably the inventions of his mind. No one was out to get them. No one wanted to take their lives here away from them. And while Michael stayed in the cottage or worked the garden, Vera would make necessary trips to Helmstead but try not to get drawn into conversations with anybody. They lived like ghosts and Margaret supposed that was just the way they liked things: the three of them, insular and alone.

She flung open the door and heard Vera’s voice call out.

“Margaret? Is that you?” She was clearly surprised that the girl was back so soon. Margaret said hello and put her school bag and coat neatly on a hook in the cupboard under the stairs. The place. She glimpsed the small wooden step that she would sit on for hours on end. Luckily, on this occasion, she closed the door on that sad and lonely part of her world. Maybe she’d be sent there later, but not yet.

The stern-looking woman from the train crash came through to the living room, wiping her hands on her apron. Vera looked the young girl up and down, suspicion in her eyes. Why had she rushed back?

“They let us out early,” Margaret lied, trying to control her panting from the exertion of running all the way.

Vera seemed to accept this statement.

“Wash your hands, then there’s some darning to do.” Vera returned to the kitchen. With her out the way, Margaret had a scant few minutes to do what she intended to do when she’d left school so quickly. She looked at the small collection of letters on the sideboard. Underneath was a copy of The Helmstead Herald, unread and still folded neatly. Margaret tucked it under her jumper and ran to her room. Once inside, she quietly closed the door, hoping Vera wouldn’t hear her latch and realise where she was. She pulled the newspaper from under her jumper and opened it out. Skimming through to page five, she found the thing she was looking for. Connie Carter in the photograph. Margaret pulled out the sheet of newspaper. She knew not to tear it as it would leave a single page on the other side of the middle of the newspaper, so she removed all four pages. She closed up the edited edition; worried that it felt thin in her hands. She had no choice but to trust that Michael wouldn’t notice that four pages were missing when he read it. She tucked it back under her jumper and quickly folded up the excised pages and put them safely under her bed. But as Margaret turned to go back down to the living room, she realised Vera Sawyer was standing in the doorway.

“What are you up to?” Vera could read the guilt on the young girl’s face.

“I just wanted to change,” Margaret stammered.

Vera shook her head. “I’m not doing more washing. You wear your uniform for now. Come on.” She pulled Margaret by the hand, downstairs to the living room. All the while, Margaret hoped that The Helmstead Herald wouldn’t fall from her jumper. Luckily she made it to the dining table, where seven pairs of holed socks were waiting for her. Vera scowled and went to the kitchen demanding that the darning was finished by teatime. Margaret turned silently in her chair, placed the newspaper back where she had found it, and went to work on the socks. Phew, she’d done it.

Later, after tea, Margaret washed up the plates with one eye on the living room, where Michael sat reading the paper. He was dressed in his shirt and tie – an outfit in which he would inexplicably work in the garden. Standards had to be maintained, as he often said. Margaret hadn’t thought much about it, but occasionally she would wonder how Michael made any money. She knew he sold, or rather Vera sold, vegetables grown on his large plot. It didn’t seem to make much money, but enough for the family to get by. For now, Margaret was more concerned with The Helmstead Herald. Would Michael feel it was thin and realise a spread was missing? Or would he give the paper a cursory glance and then go back to his shed?

Finally, he closed the newspaper.

“Not much in it,” he sighed, reaching for his tobacco.

“Nothing much happens around here.” Vera shrugged as she knitted a brown scarf by the fire. “We should be grateful really.”

“Surprising they didn’t report on the train crash,” Michael commented.

“They did,” Vera said.

Margaret’s blood ran cold. Had Vera already read the paper? Surely not – as she’d have kicked up a storm if she’d seen the picture.

“They did a front page on it last week. There was a picture of the train wreck and everything.” She wanted to move on to another subject, wary that Michael would blow up again about them taking the train and risking their lives.

Michael knew about the front-page story, but just wondered why they hadn’t done more on it, that’s all. Like most people, he knew that they usually follow things up with a report centring on the human-interest stories around the main event. It was a good opportunity for the local rag to fill its pages with stories that might actually interest people for once.

“Maybe they will when they find out who did it,” Vera said, missing a stitch.

“Who knows if they can ever catch these people.” Michael rose from his chair.

Margaret dried the last of the plates and brought them through to the Welsh dresser. Carefully she opened the door and placed the china inside, aware that Vera would always watch her like a hawk to check she didn’t chip anything. Relieved that all the plates were in place, undamaged, she asked if they needed anything else doing.

Vera shook her head. Margaret could go to her room and read her books if she liked. The young girl went off. She liked it when she was in her room with her own thoughts. Upstairs, Margaret opened her copy of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and read a few pages. She listened as Michael moved to the front door and went outside to the shed.

With Michael gone, Margaret knew that Vera would come up to check on her soon, so she ensured that she was reading studiously when she entered. Vera asked if she wanted a glass of milk. Margaret declined politely. Vera left and as Margaret heard her footfalls retreating, she pulled out the pages of The Helmstead Herald from under her bed. She opened them up. A chance to study them at last. Margaret had heard from an excitable school friend that her picture was in the newspaper and now she could see it for herself.

There was the picture of Connie Carter with Margaret. The story was a report on what had happened and what Connie had said to the reporter. Nothing that Margaret had said was in the piece. Nothing about where she lived. Margaret was relieved. She’d had a horror that in a daze of shock she might have said that Vera wasn’t her mother or something. But she still knew that if Vera even saw the photograph she would go mad. Any publicity would be hated by this private couple.

Margaret knew that she had to put it away. But she was mesmerised. She looked at the beautiful face of Connie Carter and thought about her kindness. The shared cheese, the offer of tea, the repeated enquiries about how she was. Connie had tried to find out if she was okay, even before the train crash. Connie Carter was even willing to stand up to Vera to ask that awkward question. Margaret’s heart swelled with warmth and pride at the heroine on the page. She liked Connie Carter. She wished she was her mum.

Frederick Finch couldn’t resist a good-natured chuckle at the sight before him. Henry Jameson dressed in a large pair of Wellington boots that were far too big for him, looking like deep-sea diving shoes. He was also wearing an oversized gilet, which sat on top of his clergy uniform: dog collar still visible for added comic effect. And on his head was a tweed flat cap.

“Do you not have a mirror in your house, Reverend?” Finch joked. This was Finch’s pressing appointment, the reason he couldn’t help the girls in the fields. He was teaching Henry the fine art of hunting.

“If we could just get on, Mr Finch,” Henry replied. “I’ve got a christening in an hour and a half.” He didn’t see what was so funny in his appearance and he felt that Finch’s laughter was further emasculating him after Connie’s mockery. He just wanted to catch a rabbit and prove Connie wrong. That would show her once and for all.

“Now, where are the guns?” Henry asked, keen to move things along.

“Guns? You don’t need a gun to catch a rabbit.”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, you could, but it wouldn’t leave much of it for your pot,” Finch explained. “No, we use traps for those little fellas. Here’s your weapon.”

And Finch delved into the pocket of his ample cardigan and produced a ball of twine. He placed it in the soft hands of Henry Jameson.

“String?” Henry asked in confusion.

Finch tapped his nose in a you’ll-see kind of way. Then he rubbed the back of his neck – mild concern filtering into his chubby features.

“You might have to delay that christening,” he said. “Can’t see how we’re going to do all this in an hour and a half. I bet it’ll take that long for you to learn the knot.”

“This is the first lesson. That’s all,” Henry said, regaining his enthusiasm. “As long as I can catch my own rabbit, eventually, and prove Connie wrong, I don’t care how long it takes.”

Finch exhaled. “All right. First thing is to tie a slip knot on the end of that twine.”

“A slip knot?” Henry hesitated.

“Let me show you,” Finch said, taking the ball of twine. This was going to take a long time.

A big blue bottle flitted annoyingly around Connie’s nose. She batted it away with a muddy hand. Connie and Joyce were digging manure. It was one of their least-favourite jobs – but at least they were back on Pasture Farm. Their secondment had come to an abrupt end after the train crash. The track needed repairs and it would take over a week to fix them. And without the track, there was no way to get to Brinford Farm, other than in Finch’s tractor and trailer. But he didn’t have sufficient petrol rations to take the girls every day and bring them back. So the arrangement was curtailed. The girls were back on the farm they loved. It was just a shame that a tragedy had had to occur for that to happen.

Connie eyed Dolores O’Malley with annoyance. The older woman was resting on the handle of her shovel. Her third break in ten minutes. If she stopped any more often she’d start to develop roots.

“Come on, Lore, pull your weight,” Connie said.

“I’m finding it’s hurting my back,” Dolores admitted.

“You need to get your shoulder behind it,” Joyce offered. “Then it won’t hurt your back. Lift from the knees.”

“Really? How do you know all that?”

“Painful experience,” Connie replied. “We’ve shovelled more sh-”

“She’s right,” Joyce chipped in.

Dolores reluctantly put her shovel back into use, cutting through the rich manure and transferring a load to the cart nearby. She was a prickly woman, hard to engage in conversation and quite shut off from opening herself and her feelings up. It wasn’t that she judged the other women, just that she had no real desire to interact with them. This seemed odd. A strange way in which to make the time fly by at Pasture Farm. Joyce thought that this would make her war a lonely experience, so she and Connie had taken bets about who could get Dolores to open up the most. They’d both repeatedly tried different gambits, from Connie trying to find out her favourite dessert to Joyce talking about her husband in the hope that Dolores would share something of her private life. As it was they didn’t know what her favourite dessert was (“I don’t mind really”) and they didn’t know whether she was married or not (“It’s nice that your John has left the RAF and is out of danger”). She was a very private person. The facts they did know were scant: Dolores had arrived on Pasture Farm a month ago from Reigate in Surrey (although she was from Dublin originally). Before being conscripted as a Land Girl she’d been working at the American airbase at Redhill as a nurse. And it was her experience as a nurse that was why she ended up at Helmstead as the Land Girls often had to take shifts at the military hospital at Hoxley Manor on the estate. Dolores’s experience meant that she was given the position of ward sister when she did a shift there. It also meant that Connie and Joyce would have to take orders from her at Hoxley Manor: something that Connie, in particular, resented as Dolores would become very judgemental. She knew best when it came to nursing and she wasn’t afraid to show it.

As they dug the manure, Connie winked at Joyce. To pass the time, she was going to try another gambit to find out more about Dolores.

“What’s your favourite colour, Joyce?” Connie asked.

Joyce saw where this was going and replied, “Yellow is nice.”

“Dolores?” Connie asked. Surely this couldn’t fail? Something as innocuous as a colour. But it wasn’t to be.

“I don’t know really. They’re all nice.”

“But you must have a favourite.”

“Not really. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well what colour’s your bedroom back home, then?”

Joyce could hardly contain her smile at how Connie had managed to get the conversation onto something quite personal from such unpromising beginnings. But maybe Dolores noticed the smile, because she clammed up even more than usual, portcullis defences coming down.

“What a strange question,” Dolores muttered, continuing with her digging. “Why are there so many roots down here?”

Connie looked at Joyce and the two women shared a small shrug. Good try, Connie, but that one didn’t work either.

“That’s another penny you owe me,” Joyce whispered, returning to work.

“I’m going to be broke at this rate,” Connie grumbled.

Henry checked his watch. He had fifteen minutes before he was due in church for the christening. He calculated he could stay here for another five minutes before he had to rush back to the vicarage to prepare everything. It was annoying that Connie wasn’t at the vicarage to put things in order. But he knew she had her duties as a Land Girl. However, there was a nagging feeling that even if that work didn’t exist, would she be there helping him? He put the thought out of his head and stared at the trap.

He had just five more minutes to catch a rabbit. It had taken him ages to tie the knot. As fumbled attempt built on fumbled attempt, Finch had waited with glee for the vicar to let loose with a swear word. But like Connie and Joyce waiting for Dolores to say something personal, he’d been disappointed. Henry had kept his cool and eventually managed to tie it.

Now, he was lying in some heather in a wooded area of the farm. Finch was beside him. Henry was holding one end of the twine; the other was fashioned into a loop twenty feet away near a tree. Henry was waiting for a rabbit to hop over and put its foot in the loop. Then he’d pull his end, closing the loop and trapping the rabbit.

“Isn’t there an easier way?” Henry whispered.

“All good things take time,” Finch offered, sagely.

“You didn’t think that when you made that carrot whisky. It was horrible,” Henry retorted.

“I had overwhelming supply demands so I had to rush that. This is different. Nature has its own pace.”

“But we haven’t seen a single rabbit.”

“Maybe it’s because you keep talking, Reverend.”

“I don’t keep talking.”

“Well, what are you doing now, then, eh?” Finch chuckled.

Henry shook his head. He was cold and the front of his body felt decidedly damp from lying in the heather for so long. He knew he wasn’t going to catch a rabbit today.

That evening, Connie walked back to the vicarage. As usual, her muscles were aching and she had blisters on her hands. She was looking forward to supper with Henry and an early night. And hoping that they could just have a nice time. But then she remembered that Henry would be late back. He was visiting an elderly French man who lived in a cottage on the edges of the Gorley Woods. Dr Beauchamp was dying and liked Henry to visit him to give him strength and comfort during his final days. And the conscientious young vicar felt obliged, even happy, to do his duty. Connie knew that Dr Beauchamp liked to talk, at as much length as his breathing problems would allow, about how his country was now occupied by the Germans and about how proud he was of his own son, who was fighting for the resistance there. So Henry wouldn’t be back until late.

Connie resigned herself to the mixed emotions of facing an evening alone. There would be no more disagreements or friction, but she’d miss him. As she approached the porch, she was surprised to find a visitor waiting on the doorstep of the vicarage. It was Roger Curran, the reporter from The Helmstead Herald. He tipped the small trilby on his head at her. Connie wasn’t sure if it really was a small hat or that it just looked small on his large head. He smiled warmly at her.

“Mrs Jameson! I have the most splendid news.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that, then?”

“Do you know? I’ve often heard that vicar’s wives make the very best tea.”

“I wouldn’t bank on it,” Connie said under her breath. But with nothing more pressing to do, she invited the journalist inside, slopped water into the kettle and put it on the stove.

The two of them were soon sitting around the dining table and Roger Curran’s podgy fingers were taking a second biscuit from the plate Connie had provided. He sipped at his tea and winced slightly. Connie knew it wasn’t one of her best efforts, but she found making tea really unaccountably tricky. She had made Roger Curran a ‘milky horror’ (as she liked to call it), with too much milk and too little tea. She guessed that he might revise his patter about vicar’s wives making the best tea from now on as he sipped it with a grimace.

“I’ll come straight to the point, Mrs Jameson,” he said, wiping a crumb from his lips. “It seems my little story has been picked up by one of the national newspapers.”

Connie looked surprised. She wasn’t sure whether she felt happy about that. “Well, can’t you stop them?”

Roger smiled. “Oh no, it’s a good thing. It means I get credit for a story that many more people will read. And that means a lot more people will know about your heroism. And I hope I’m not talking out of turn when I say that although the story is just the sort of inspiring thing that Blitz-torn London needs to read, its success is also due to how fine you look in the photograph, Mrs Jameson.”

Connie felt uneasy at the attention. Henry wouldn’t be happy about her being seen as some sort of poster girl for plucky Britain. The wolf-whistles outside the pub were enough to get Henry’s back up, without any added spotlight. She put it out of her mind and asked about the explosion. Had the police found out who was responsible yet?

Roger shook his head, spraying crumbs like a Labrador shaking itself from a bath. “They’re not sure. But the remains of the device were the same as one used to blow up a post-office truck a month ago. And the station guard at Brinford recalled a tall man taking the train, the same one you got, every day for the seven days before the crash. He wasn’t on it on that fateful day, but people are saying that his other journeys were for reconnaissance. Check the timings and that.”

It chilled Connie that a seemingly ordinary commuter, a man who would go unnoticed in the daily bustle, could have been there timing the journey to the precise second.

After another biscuit, Roger Curran tipped his small hat a second time and left the vicarage (his tea largely untouched). The story would be in a national newspaper! Connie shrugged. She hoped it would still be tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper and then it would all be forgotten about. But she would be wrong. It was a story that would change her life.

Margaret Sawyer froze in fear as she approached her house. Roger Curran, the reporter from The Helmstead Herald was standing outside the front door. He’d come to the house. No one ever came to the house!

He rapped on the knocker, brushed the biscuit crumbs from his tank top and cleared his throat. He glanced nonchalantly at the neat front garden, decorative rows of small box bushes trimmed into squares alternating with rhododendron bushes that were showing their last flowering for the season. The whole design was so regimented that Roger Curran assumed a soldier must live here.

Margaret ducked down behind a wall, peering over the top to see if Vera or Michael would answer. She prayed that neither of them were inside the house. Vera might be out selling vegetables and Michael was probably in one of the outbuildings, tending to his seedlings. And even if Michael was at home, he rarely answered the door, so she thought she might be safe on that score.

After what seemed like an age, Roger Curran turned on his heel. He glanced up at the house one last time and made his way down the path. He passed the low wall where Margaret was hiding, but didn’t see her. She was relieved. So much for eagle-eyed journalists!

As she watched the rotund figure amble away down the lane, Margaret hoped with all her heart that he wouldn’t return and that would be an end to it.

Chapter 5

Two days earlier.

The rain lashed down, turning the London pavements into glistening onyx walkways in the dying light of early evening. Vince Halliday shivered against the cold and pulled the collar up on his great coat. The coat used to belong to a GI, but Vince had won it in a game of poker. Or, to be strictly accurate a rigged game of poker. Still, who was complaining? Vince had a new coat out of it and the GI had learnt a lesson in not being gullible.

Vince was a powerfully built man in his early thirties with icy-blue eyes, slicked-back hair and an air of menace about him. Braces held his trousers high on a frame that had little definition. Vince’s body was wide and he didn’t taper at any point. He just went straight up and down, like a wide, imposing fence post. He enjoyed playing on his intimidating presence, liking the discomfort that other people could feel when near him. Vince’s keen eyes darted from side to side as he crossed the Fulham Road, weaving around a pony and trap and then a car to make it to the other side. He made his way across to an alleyway, which was illuminated by the light of a single window from a block of flats. Vince squinted as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, wary of being jumped. Fulham was a rough area.

At the end of the alley, in a small, rain-lashed courtyard, was a butcher’s van. As Vince approached, two heavy-looking men, pin-stripe suits and trilby hats denoting their status as wide boys, quickly appeared from the van. The one with the pencil moustache indicated for Vince to follow them. Vince’s fingers gripped the cosh in his pocket. He might need it. As was always the case in Vince’s life, when he met someone, he’d weigh them up for their potential threat value. Could he win against them in a fight? Vince decided that he could take these two apart if he had to. But he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

“You got it?” Moustache Man said as they swept under an awning and walked into a warehouse.

“Does it look like I’ve got it?” Vince replied, with contempt.

Moustache Man threw a look at his partner, a man with a large hooked nose and heavy eye brows. An ex-boxer, thought Vince. He thought he could still take him apart in a fight. Moustache Man was also assessing the situation. Was he losing face by being talked to in this way? Should he do something? But before he could decide on a course of action, an older voice bellowed from the recesses of the damp warehouse.

“Vince! I see you brought the crappy weather with you!”

A rotund man in a light-grey pinstripe suit appeared from the gloom and shook Vince warmly by the hand. Vince clocked that he was wearing a signet ring on each finger. It was his trademark: jewellery that could double as a knuckle duster. This was Amos Ackley – a comical-looking figure with a shiny bald head. But Vince didn’t underestimate the appearance of this man and was somewhat relieved when he got his hand back in one piece from the crushing hand shake. A handshake that was designed to intimidate. Amos Ackley was an amusingly named, but vicious, gangster and black-market trader, a man who had run most of Kensington, Fulham and Putney since 1937. As the authorities concentrated their efforts on the immediate effects of the war, the air raids, the destruction, the looting, Amos had seen his shady little empire expand, filling the darkness left by lawlessness. Now he liked to think of himself as Mr Black Market, a man who could get you anything you needed even without a ration book. He had the police in his pocket on the understanding that Amos wouldn’t commit too many open atrocities on the streets of South London. But that was fine, the only people who usually felt his wrath were gangsters further down the food chain or those civilians, as he called them, who dared to resist his attempts at extortion and blackmail.

“Bit of rain is good for you,” Vince said, smiling.

Moustache Man and Eyebrows circled round to stand either side of Amos Ackley. Vince noticed that both the heavies had a hand in their pockets. It didn’t matter if they didn’t actually have weapons in there because, like the crushing handshake before it, he knew this was being done to intimidate him. To show him who was boss.

“Now then, I’m looking forward to my Sunday lunch, Vince,” Amos smiled.

“The sirloin is out of this world,” Vince replied. “Succulent.”

Amos laughed. “Hark at you, the flaming expert.”

“I’ve had too much bad meat in my time to not know the difference, Mr Ackerly,” Vince smiled.

“And you’ve lifted a lorry full of this stuff?”

Vince knew he didn’t have to go into specifics about where it had come from. Amos wasn’t interested in provenance. “It was supposed to be filling a load of yank stomachs, but their supply chain got broken, didn’t it? I just need the three hundred and it’s yours, van included.” He knew three hundred pounds was a lot of money, but then he was selling a huge amount of premier quality sirloin steak. And in a country where meat was rationed, the sales potential of that meat was phenomenal.

Amos cracked his knuckles. A dark smile flickered over his face. Vince felt uneasy. Had he misremembered how much they’d agreed on? Or was Amos going to try to short-change him?

Or, the worst scenario of all, did Amos know what Vince was up to?

That morning, Vince Halliday had opened his eyes without getting a wink of sleep. He’d been too nervous. This was the big one. It would be a day filled with danger but, if it went well, it would end in incredible rewards. Three hundred pounds would set him up. It would allow him to get out of the rat hole where he lived and start again somewhere else. He stared at the yellowing ceiling paint and the plaster rose around the light. All being well, this would be the last time he woke up in this run-down tenement.

There was a soft tap on the door. Vince swung his thick legs off the bed and pulled up his trousers, hooking the braces over his shoulders. He opened the door a fraction, saw the friendly face of a wide-eyed girl with a battered cloche hat, and let her in.

It was Glory. Her real name was Gloria Wayland, but Vince liked calling her Glory. Although she always wore her desperately unfashionable cloche hat, Vince had never bothered to ask why. He guessed it had some sentimental value; but delving into that area had little interest for him. She was seventeen, tall and thin. Gangly from being undernourished from all her years in a children’s home in Bow. When she left at the age of sixteen, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Army and learnt to drive an ambulance. But one night, a road near Shockley Aerodrome had been bombed and Glory crashed her ambulance into a ravine. With trauma from the accident, Glory’s army career was cut short and she found herself on Civvy Street. It was a harsh place to be, and soon Glory was penniless and living on the road. That’s when Vince had befriended her. There was no romance or sex involved, just the simple and unedifying business arrangement which Vince had found had worked with girls so well in the past. He would befriend a woman who needed help and then turn her to a life of crime. Many of Vince’s scams would require a female face: someone to lure and distract his targets. This was particularly true of the wedding-ring scam. In this caper, Vince would encourage the girl to flirt with a rich married man (the target) in a bar or restaurant. Then the girl would take the man to a rented room, with the prospect of having sex. But once there, Vince would threaten the man with violence unless the man handed over his wedding ring. Then with the wedding ring in his possession, Vince could extort money by blackmail from the rich man, threatening to give the ring to the man’s wife and to explain how he’d come by it.

Glory was fairly good at the wedding-ring scam and they’d worked it successfully four times together. But just as often, she failed, due to her awkwardness and lack of confidence, to lure the man to the room. She knew that Vince had her on borrowed time. She had to prove her worth to him soon or she’d be replaced and out on her ear.

“Is it too early?” Glory asked.

Vince shook his head. “Haven’t slept a wink anyway.”

“Me neither,” Glory said nervously.

Vince pulled a suit jacket over his shirt. The fabric was shiny and old. He turned up the collar around his neck.

“I was thinking,” Glory said as she sat on the end of the bed. Vince looked at her sad and fragile face. “I was thinking that maybe we should just tick along as we are.”

Vince went to interject, but Glory wasn’t finished.

“I mean we’re making money each month from the wedding rings and everything.” She knew she was on thin ice; knowing that Vince wasn’t happy with her success rate.

“Not enough, though.” Vince bent down so his face was level with the young girl’s.

“Trouble is, it’s a lot of work keeping them in line,” he said. “Each time I go to collect a payment, I think that this will be the time they jump me or they’ll have a mob of mates waiting or the police.”

“But this is too dangerous …” Glory pleaded.

“By tonight, we’ll be out of here. Three hundred pounds, Glory.” He let the words sink in. “Think what we could do with that money.”

Glory had thought about it. A lot. With her share, she wanted to move to the country and put some money down on a cottage somewhere. She’d have ducks in the garden and then she’d find a husband and they’d live in the lovely cottage together. That was her plan. Each time she said it, Vince found it ridiculous, but he kept the thought to himself.

Vince planned to move up north and start a club. It’d be a club with roulette wheels and dancing girls. He’d make a fortune from the GIs and the business men up there. That was his plan.

Glory still looked scared and uncertain.

In truth, Vince Halliday was just as scared and uncertain. This wasn’t a business deal. Vince wasn’t really selling meat for money. That’s because he didn’t have the meat. Well, he had some, but not three hundred pounds worth. This was a scam. And if this scam, the big one, went wrong then he probably wouldn’t live to tell the tale. But if it went right, then all his Christmases would come at once.

He had to brave-face it for the young girl’s sake. Had to gee her up and get her on side.

“After tonight, we don’t have to grub around no more,” Vince said. “After tonight, we can relax and live all our dreams, yeah?”

Glory looked at him, searching for the truth in his eyes. Did he believe what he was saying? Wasn’t he scared? After a long moment, she decided he was being honest and that he really believed it. She didn’t realise he was lying.

“Right, that’s the spirit, girl,” Vince said, slipping on his brogues. “Let’s go and get a cup of tea …”

In the warehouse, a long, tense moment passed. Vince was certain that his heart was beating so loudly that everyone could hear it – like a klaxon warning of his guilt. Amos cracked a smile at last and revealed his hand.

“I ain’t paying the full three hundred,” he said, letting the words sink in without following them up. Vince gave a that’s-your-prerogative kind of smile, but inside he was fuming and he wanted answers and explanations. Who did this jumped-up idiot think he was, welching on the deal?

“Really?” Vince said, as neutrally as he could manage.

Moustache Man sneered at him. Vince turned away from the underling with contempt.

“I’ll pay two hundred.”

“But Mr Ackley-”

“Don’t Mr Ackley me, son. Three hundred’s a heck of a lot of money to find. Come to think of it, two hundred is too. It’ll wipe me out until I can sell on the meat,” Amos Ackley explained. “But the way I see it, you’ve got a van full of prime steak that’s going off by the second. So it’s a buyer’s market.”

Vince looked the rotund figure in the eye. The moment hung in the air. Finally, he agreed. Okay, then.

Amos grinned and laughed. His signet-ring-adorned hand came thrusting out and crushed Vince’s hand in a shake to seal the deal.

“Deliver it here in an hour,” Amos said.

Vince’s throat felt dry. Here was the moment of truth. The moment at which he had to pull the con.

“It’s being driven to the common, at Barnes,” Vince said.

“But I want it here,” Amos spat.

“It’s too risky bringing it here. The old bill know about this place, don’t they?” Vince said. “The common is neutral. We’ve never used it before.”

Amos Ackley looked at his colleagues. Moustache Man shrugged. It didn’t seem to make much difference, did it? It wasn’t that far to go.

“Who’s driving it?” Amos asked.

“Glory,” Vince replied. “That girl I work the rings with.”

Amos thought she was a good kid. He liked her. He started to walk away. “My men will meet you there in an hour and they’ll transfer the meat into this van. And then I’ll give you the money.”

“No,” Vince said, the word coming out a little too abruptly. Amos Ackley stopped in his tracks at this unexpected and potentially confrontational utterance.

“What?”

“I need a deposit.” Vince smiled.

“How much?”

“Half,” Vince said, eyeing Amos without breaking his gaze.

A shark-like grin spread on Amos’ face.

“Get lost.”

“Come on, you’re already stiffing me on this deal. I need something,” Vince replied. His throat was hoarse and his chest felt like it would explode with his pumping heart.

He knew that Amos was greedy. He knew that the gangster could make five hundred pounds selling all that sirloin. Slowly Amos’s hand went to his pocket. He pulled out a wad of bank notes. He counted out one hundred pounds and held it out in his jewel-encrusted paw.

“You’d better be there, otherwise I’ll turn London upside down,” Amos growled.

Vince reassured Amos that he would be: he wanted the rest of the money, after all. He tucked the notes into the inside pocket of his cheap jacket and said thanks, before turning on his heels and walking away. It was the longest walk of Vince’s life: with each step he was fearful that Amos would change his mind or he’d rumble the con and Moustache Man would whack him on the back of the head.

But Vince made it out of the warehouse and found himself in the cool rain of the alley. He glanced up as he walked so the water could cool his hot, tired eyes. And then he strode away as quickly as he could. He had half the money. Now to con the rest.

One hour later, Glory was waiting in an ambulance on Barnes Common. She’d killed the lights and was listening for any sound in the semi-darkness. The moon provided some illumination but she couldn’t see much. Shadows were all around and soon Glory imagined danger in every one of them. Any sound startled her, from the cawing of a crow somewhere in the trees to the whistle of a man seeking his dog. Her hands were clammy so she rubbed them dry on her dress. Swallowing hard, she started to hum a tune – ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ – to pass the time and to distract herself from the horror stories playing out in her mind.

She was wearing her best jacket and her white blouse. As always, the cloche hat sat incongruously on her head.

Suddenly, there was a tap on the window. Glory jumped out of her skin. But it was only Vince. He opened the door and whispered to her in an urgent voice, worried that someone might be in the dark listening.

He told her that he’d got one hundred pounds in his pocket and that Amos was on his way to complete the deal. Glory was nervous. She pleaded that they should quit while they were ahead. Take the hundred and scarper. It was a lot of money and they could get a long way away with it.

“Gotta keep your nerve,” Vince said. “In twenty minutes, we can double it. And then we’ll be gone. Promise.”

Glory looked unsure, scared. At this moment, the already young-looking seventeen-year-old looked about twelve – a nervous and petrified child with a ridiculous hat. Vince patted the back of her hand where her fingers were clenched tightly to the steering wheel.

“Think of your cottage,” Vince pleaded, playing her. “Hold your nerve, yeah?”

Glory hoped he was right. She wished she could be anywhere else. It was so easy how this had happened – so easy how trouble could find you if you made the wrong decision; took a path of least resistance because that’s what the charming man in your life told you was best.

Vince went to the back of the ambulance and unlatched the back doors. The inside had been modified and instead of a bed and hospital supplies, the back was full of wooden crates. Vince moved the topmost crate nearer and opened the wooden lid. Inside were twenty greaseproof packages nestled in straw. Vince opened a greaseproof pack and looked at the succulent red steak within. Glistening in the moonlight, it looked wet with blood. Satisfied, he wrapped it up and put it back in the box.

The scam would work because of the fifty or so wooden crates; this was the only one that contained any steak. The other identical boxes were weighted with straw and wood to make them feel as if they contained steak as well. When Amos got here, it was crucial that he opened and inspected this one box. If he picked any other, then he would immediately realise that Vince was trying to con him. And the consequences would be severe. It wouldn’t only be the steak that was covered in blood.

Glory had asked him, when she was pacing around his bedsit, wearing a furrow in the already threadbare carpet, how he would ensure that Amos Ackley opened the right box. How could he do that when there was only a one in fifty chance? Vince had smiled a reassuring grin. “Magic,” he’d said. And with that he produced – with a magician-like flourish – a hair grip from behind his hand. As if on cue, a strand of Glory’s hair fell down over her face. She was impressed with the trick, but it didn’t relieve her of the knot of cold fear in her stomach. It was all very well making your friend laugh in the comfort of your own room, but a different matter when you so much relied on getting it right, in the middle of a common in the dead of night.

So how would Vince ensure that Amos would open the box?

With ten minutes to go, Vince wished Glory luck. He told her that if anything went wrong she should run for it and save herself. There would be no point in them both being killed. Glory hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She shook Vince’s hand. He looked at her young and innocent face and smiled. Did he feel a pang of guilt for involving her in this crazy scam? “See you, Glory.”

“See you, Vince,” she said.

Vince kissed her on the cheek.

And then Glory walked off into the night.

Now Vince had been right. The plan would involve magic, or rather the magician’s trick of misdirecting an audience. You want a person to pick a certain card? You misdirect them. You want a person to lift a particular cup where you haven’t hidden the bean? You misdirect them. Vince knew that Amos would want to see the back of the ambulance. Naturally, he would want to inspect the merchandise he was buying. The thing was, instead of a van full of meat, Vince had one box which contained meat. When Amos came to inspect the merchandise, he wouldn’t be very impressed if Vince chose the box, opened it and showed him the contents. He’d smell a rat. No, so the trick would be to make Amos think he had free rein in his choice of box and then to switch the chosen box for the only one that contained any meat. But how?

Misdirection.

That’s where the fact that all the boxes looked identical came into play. Vince would ask Amos if he wanted to see the stock. Amos would pick a box at random. Vince would get the selected box from the van. On the outside it would look like the box that actually contained the meat and it would even weigh the same, thanks to the weight of wood inside it. But before they could open it, a carefully timed distraction would occur.

Misdirection.

Identical boxes.

Glory, hiding in the dark, would provide this distraction by blowing a policeman’s whistle. She had to do it at the perfect time – when Vince had removed the box selected by Amos from the ambulance, but before Amos opened it. During this distraction, Vince would switch the boxes, for the one underneath the ambulance. The one that contained the meat. And then Amos would open the staged box, see the meat and be satisfied. Then he’d hand over the other one hundred pounds.

That was the plan.

Simple.

Glory’s house in the country and Vince’s life as a club owner depended on it.

At five minutes ahead of schedule, Amos Ackley appeared behind the van. Moustache Man, Eyebrows and two other men were with him. The men were jittery, moving their feet around in nervous agitation. In the distance, Vince could see the lights of the butcher’s van parked up, engine running, the exhaust pushing out white smoke in soft clouds over the dewy grass. Vince couldn’t be certain if more men were in the van. Could there be more thugs inside? It was a risk. There might be more people watching who might not take their eyes off him when the police whistle went off. Misdirection was all well and good, but you had to control where people were looking. Vince suddenly felt like running away.

“In here, is it?” Amos had an air of suspicion; the brusqueness of a man who wanted to get this over with. Vince had to tell himself that men like Amos always had an air of suspicion. It didn’t mean they actually suspected anything was wrong, just that they were open to the idea that it might be. That’s how they operated. Suspicion at all times. Trust no one.

“Yeah. It’s all there,” Vince said, indicating with as much nonchalance as he could muster, for Amos to take a look.

Amos stepped back and Moustache Man opened the doors of the ambulance.

Row upon row of wooden boxes stood in front of them. Each crate was marked with a stencil saying “Property of US Military”.

Amos smiled. “Looks good. Let’s see inside.”

“Yeah. Choose whichever one you like,” Vince said, knowing that the only box he wanted them to look inside was the one hidden underneath the tail gate of the ambulance.

“One?” Amos laughed. “For two hundred quid, I might open them all.”

The others laughed. Vince felt his throat closing up. He knew he had to laugh as well and somehow he heard a small nervous giggle emerge from his lips. He hadn’t thought about this possibility. Why hadn’t he?

“Eeny meeny miney mo – that one,” Amos said, pointing a stubby, ringed finger to a crate two down from the top.

Moustache Man obediently started to remove the crates above it. Vince watched as they were placed on the ground. He still needed to get to the full crate and he was hoping, with all his soul, that Moustache Man wouldn’t block his access with the stack he was building.

Vince felt the plan slipping away from him.

Finally, Moustache Man reached the chosen crate and put it on the ground.

With no fanfare, Amos indicated for him to open it.

Moustache Man removed a small crowbar from his pocket and pushed the end under the wooden lid. But as he reached down, Vince leaned against the door of the van. It was the signal for Glory to cause the distraction.

Moustache Man started to prise the wooden lid off the crate, his black two-tone shoe pressed on top to get some leverage with his jemmy. In the deathless quiet, Vince heard the creak of the leather in his shoe as he strained.

Vince started to bite his lip. Come on, Glory.

The plan was falling apart.

Suddenly, a police whistle sounded in the night. Peep!

“Bloody hell,” Amos snapped. “Sort that out.” One of his men ran forward to the sound of the noise – while Amos and Eyebrows peered out into the gloom to see if they could spot how many coppers were out there. They didn’t seem overly alarmed.

They didn’t seem overly – misdirected.

Peep! Peep! Peep!

But to Vince’s horror, Moustache Man stood still and didn’t move. Moustache Man waited, with his foot still on the partially opened crate.

There was no way that Vince could do the switch!

The plan wasn’t going to work!

He glanced into the distance, where the dispatched gangster was running to the trees. He was yelling, “Hey, you there!” He was going to catch Glory – the girl to whom Vince had promised everything would be all right. The girl he’d promised could get her dream cottage.

Vince knew that the situation was going badly wrong. There was only one thing for it. There had to be a plan B. Vince had to go on the attack. He had to pull the focus back from Glory and onto himself, if either of them had a hope in hell of escaping.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Glory being dragged out of the trees by the gangster. She stumbled into the grass and was roughly yanked back up on her feet. Amos was shouting that he couldn’t understand why a girl was blowing a police whistle. And then he recognised her and everything fell into place.

“Gloria,” he said, anger rising in his voice.

Vince had to act fast. He grabbed the crowbar out of Moustache Man’s hand and brought it up hard under the man’s chin. The gangster slumped unconscious across the box. Vince turned menacingly to Amos, waving the crowbar at him.

“Give me the money. And you let us go,” Vince shouted.

The other gangster slowed, taking in the developments as he returned, dragging Glory from the trees. He waited for his boss to tell him what to do. On the ground, a disorientated Moustache Man was nursing a broken jaw.

“I’ve got your girl,” Amos growled.

Glory looked more wide-eyed than ever. Her cloche hat was askew on her head. Vince felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t be mixed up in all this. But it was her who apologised. “Sorry, Vince,” she said in a small, wavering voice. That nearly tipped Vince over the edge. He’d failed her and now they were both going to die.

“They were going wrong anyway,” Vince said, offering a small smile, before turning his attention back to Amos Ackley.

“The money and you let us go.”

“What if I get my man to kill Glory?”

“Then I’ll kill you,” Vince said softly, his eyes had narrowed and he was strangely calm, as if he’d entered some sort of meditative state.

Amos smiled, as if he thrived on this sort of adrenaline rush. He loved a good stand-off, whether it was in a game of poker or standing in the dark on Barnes Common. Who would blink first? The stakes were high – life and death. Amos knew that either way someone would die in the next few minutes. He loved that. His heart was pumping and he felt more alive than he had in weeks. He relished the challenge.

Vince seemed to be relishing it too. Even if it was mostly bravado. A need to save Glory.

But then Amos changed everything. He gave a signal to the thug holding Glory.

The man sprang open a long flick knife from out of his left hand. Where did that come from? Now that’s a magic trick, thought Vince grimly. Glory was trying to pull away, but the thug pushed her onto the ground.

“Let her go.”

Amos shook his head, coal-black eyes boring into Vince.

Glory looked scared. The thug was gripping her arm above the elbow. A tight grip from a meaty fist. She glanced at Vince for guidance. What did he want her to do? Would it help if she screamed to cause a distraction or something? Or if she struggled?

Vince gripped the crowbar. He glanced from her and then back to Amos, staring intently – both men determined to break the other’s nerve.

It was a stalemate.

But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Chapter 6

As dawn added a purple tinge to the retreating night sky, the ambulance slowed to a juddering halt. The petrol tank finally empty with even the fumes that had sustained the last few miles gone. As the engine clattered to a bone-dry, choking standstill, the driver managed to use the last of the vehicle’s momentum to tuck it onto a long-grassed verge. At the wheel, Vince winced as he wrapped the makeshift bandage tighter around his injured right hand. It had been bleeding badly, and it was only now that he noticed that the steering wheel was slick with redness. But it was a small price to pay for his escape. He staggered out from the cab, a gun butt sticking out from the belt of his trousers, and found his legs as he scanned his surroundings. It seemed to be the edge of a village: a fork in the road by some picture-postcard idyll of sleepiness. The place was called Thatchford Green, but the name meant nothing to Vince. He was simply relieved to be as far away from London as possible.

Walking along the road as the darkness finally lost its cyclical battle with day, Vince found himself in the village. He glanced up the main street and saw a pub. It was four in the morning, but maybe they would have a room for him to sleep things off.

He straightened his jacket, buttoning it to hide the gun and made his way towards the pub, bracing himself as he rapped on the door. After a moment, a bedroom light switched on above his head.

As Vince waited for a response, he noticed a newspaper vending stall next to the pub. The headline behind the mesh caught his eye.

“Courageous Connie Carter Saves Day”.

Vince was surprised. He knew that name.

It couldn’t be the same girl, could it? Vince plucked a newspaper from the pile behind the stall and leafed through it in disbelief. He was so engrossed, he didn’t hear the angry voice of the pub landlord behind him. He didn’t see the man standing in his vest and pyjama bottoms.

There was a photograph of Connie Carter and Margaret Sawyer on page three. He stared at the face of Connie Carter: her familiar smile. Her full lips. Bleeding hell, it was the same girl! He couldn’t believe it. As he tried to make sense of it, Vince picked out a jumble of salient words as he scanned the page: train crash, vicar’s wife, Helmstead.

Vicar’s wife? What the hell? Was this some sort of joke?

“’Ere, I’m talking to you.”

Vince finally realised that the landlord had appeared and was giving him daggers. Vince flashed his best approximation of a charismatic smile. It wasn’t something that came naturally.

“Got any rooms?”

“Not for your sort,” the landlord growled, spotting Vince’s makeshift bandage and bleeding hand. This along with his sharp suit and dark demeanour, meant he had trouble written on him as clearly as words through a stick of rock.

Vince smiled.

“Just one question, then, and I’ll be on my way, yeah?”

The landlord pulled a face. He wasn’t about to serve alcohol at this time in the morning. Not to this fellow. But the question wasn’t about getting a crafty whisky or a breakfast pint.

“How far am I from Helmstead?” asked Vince.

A wailing scream came from elsewhere in the large house.

Connie ignored it. Hard as it was to listen to, she was used to the unpleasant background noise. One of the downsides of working in a hospital. Instead she got on with her work and pulled the white sheet taut. The tucked end came loose from the other side of the bed. Just as she got one end sorted, the other would always do this. Connie thought it was some sort of secret test to see how long it would take her to swear. But since Hoxley Manor’s East Wing had been turned into a makeshift ward for the sick and injured, this was a regular part of her work when she wasn’t toiling in the fields. Digging ditches and trying to get sheets to stay on beds. That made up her whole life, it seemed sometimes.

Joyce came over and pulled the other side of the sheet taut. Connie tucked it in and smiled thanks.

“Dr Channing said we can finish when we’ve made the beds,” Joyce said.

This made Connie smile even more. With three more beds to make, and with Joyce helping her, she might be able to leave in about twenty minutes if she got a wriggle on. Then she might be able to see Henry before he went off on his evening visit to see the ailing old Frenchman, Dr Beauchamp. Perhaps she could cook him dinner and make him see that she could do all that sort of thing as well.

With new purpose, Connie unfolded a fresh sheet and moved to the neighbouring bed.

When she finished, Connie scampered home. Dusk was beginning to fall as she ran through the village, past the pub and down the hill to the vicarage. In the distance, far away, she could see a figure riding away on a push bike. Oh blast! It was Henry. Connie stopped in her tracks, annoyed to have missed him by such a narrow margin. One less bed and she’d have made it! But again, this disappointment was tinged with a slight relief. There would be no arguments tonight. Was that the way she should be viewing her marriage after only a month? It felt wrong, but she couldn’t hide her feelings from herself.

The wind knocked from her sails, she trudged towards the front door; her legs suddenly feeling very heavy and tired. She entered the hallway. No old biddies there tonight. No Henry. The house was still and quiet without Henry inside it. A house, not a home. Connie closed the door and entered the parlour, where her spirits lifted in pleasant surprise. There was a note on the table next to a china plate covered by another plate. Connie read the note:

“I caught you some supper! Love Henry”

Connie’s hand reached towards the plate and lifted the cover. What would it be? What could Henry have caught for her? Not a rabbit, surely –

Under the cover was a cheese sandwich. Connie grinned, warmed by his playfulness. He was trying his best. She would try hers too and have things spick and span for when he came home. She slipped off her boots and sat in front of the fire in the big armchair. Henry had left the embers burning, with a fire guard on the hearth. Connie placed some new wood onto the embers and watched the fire slowly catch hold as she sat there and ate her sandwich. The spoils of the wild.

After Connie had eaten she looked at the clock above the fireplace. It was half-eight. Henry should be back soon. Putting on her apron (Connie felt like a proper vicar’s wife when she did this), she decided to busy herself with some chores until then. She unbolted the back door and went into the small vicarage garden to collect the eggs from the chickens. There were two deck chairs that she had put at the far end of the plot. The chairs faced away from the house, and Henry and Connie sometimes sat there in the evening, chatting over a cup of tea. On one side of the garden was a narrow chicken run that stretched the length of the grass. Part of the wooden frame had been broken and, as it awaited a proper repair, a large amount of mesh had been used to ensure the occupants didn’t escape. Inside were two chickens, whom Connie had nicknamed Esther and Gladys (after warden Esther Reeves and local busybody Gladys Gulliver). Esther had laid an egg and Connie picked it up and shook it free of the hay that had stuck to it. Carefully she placed it in her apron pocket and looked around to see if Gladys had produced anything. Suddenly something caught her eye. Cigarette smoke was rising from one of the deck chairs. Connie looked closer. Although the chair was turned away from her, she could see the definite indentation of a weight on the canvas. And on closer inspection: two silhouetted legs going to the ground.

“Who’s there?” Connie said, in as commanding a voice as she could muster.

It wouldn’t be Henry, would it? Playing a joke? No, he wouldn’t smoke a cigarette, even for a lark. No reply came from the chair, although Connie could sense that the occupant had heard her and was now motionless, on edge and waiting.

“It’s not funny,” Connie said, looking for some weapon. But Henry was such a stickler for putting the few garden tools they owned into the shed that there was nothing to hand. She spotted a small earthenware flowerpot and picked it up. Anything would do.

No head was visible, which meant the occupant was either slouched down in the seat or was very short. Her heart was pounding as she neared the side of the chair.

“You’ve had your fun.” Her mouth was dry and it was hard to swallow.

She reached the edge of the chair. Finally she could see the occupant. A big man, slouched down. The angular good looks of his face, his slicked hair, the cheap, dark suit. Eyes glinting in the night air. This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. Jesus, no …

And yet, Vince Halliday was sitting, as bold as brass, in her garden smoking a cigarette.

“Looks like you’ve had your fun too,” Vince said, fixing her with his deep-blue eyes. “Nice set-up, Con. Vicar’s wife, eh? Who’d have thought? I laughed when I saw that.”

At first she couldn’t believe it. How was this possible? How had he found her? She couldn’t even really hear his words as her head swam with a seasick-like queasiness, half-hoping that this was some hallucination caused by too much sun in the fields.

“So what’s the angle with you being a vicar’s wife?”

“No angle,” she stammered. Connie steadied herself. She felt as if she wanted to throw up. This situation was so wrong. A sickening juxtaposition of two things that shouldn’t ever meet. This grubby bull wasn’t part of her world of jam-making, tea-drinking and church fund-raising. Wearing her apron, Connie suddenly felt like a fraud, a silly girl playing at being a vicar’s wife. It added to her own deepest fears that this was all some silly role-play. Who was she kidding thinking she could be a genteel lady? Who was she kidding thinking that she could escape?

As her mind focused and she snapped back to the moment, she knew one thing. She didn’t want this. She didn’t even want to ask what he wanted here, what he was doing. She just wanted him to go so she could pretend he’d never been here. Pretend he’d never soured the milk of her supposedly perfect life. But she found herself asking nonetheless.

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