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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Cover photographs © Colin Thomas (Woman); Jonathan Ring (soldier); Shutterstock.com (road) Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013
Ruby Jackson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007506262
Ebook Edition © November 2013 ISBN: 9780007506286
Version: 2014-12-17
Contents
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Read on for an exclusive extract of On A Wing And A Prayer, coming in spring 2015
Find out how it all started for Daisy, Rose, Sally and Grace in Churchill’s Angels - available now. Read on for an exciting extract …
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Acknowledgements
About Ruby Jackson
Also by Ruby Jackson
About the Publisher
Kent, February 1940
She had been right to do it, to pack up her few personal belongings and go without a word to anyone, even to those who had been so kind to her for many years. She regretted that: not the kindness, of course, but the manner of her leaving. How could she explain to them that she could no longer bear her present existence, the hostility of her own sister, the uncomfortable, unwelcoming damp little house that she and, she supposed, Megan called home? Even her job in the office of the Vickers munitions factory was unfulfilling. All that had brightened her life had been the friendship of the Brewer and Petrie families, the small garden that she and her friends had created, and daydreams of Sam. Winter frosts had killed the garden that had given her such pleasure, but Sam, who had seen war coming and had enlisted long before September 1939, was with his regiment – somewhere. Useless to daydream about Sam, though, not because she had no idea where he was or what was happening to him but because he loved Sally Brewer.
It was easy to picture Sally, with her long black hair and her glorious blue eyes. Sally, an aspiring actress, was almost as tall as any one of the three Petrie sons, and a perfect foil for Sam’s Nordic blondness. How could she, plain Grace Paterson, who did not even know who her parents were, be attractive to a man like Sam? Oh, he had been kind to her when she was a child but Sam, eldest in a large family, had been kind to everyone. What would he think of her when he heard some day that she had disappeared without a word?
Grace sobbed and buried her face in her pillow in case any of the other girls were to come in and hear her. Her conscience, however, kept pricking her and, eventually, she found that intolerable. You have to write, Grace, you owe them that much.
She got up, straightened the grey woollen blanket and thumped her lumpy pillow into shape. Right, I’m not going to lie here whimpering, she decided. I will write to everyone and then, when it’s off my mind, I’m going to try to be the best land girl in the whole of the Land Army.
She picked up the notebook she had bought in nearby Sevenoaks, and moved down the room between the long rows of iron bedsteads, each with its warm grey blankets, and here and there an old, much-loved toy brought from home for comfort. She reached the desk where, for once, no other girl was sitting and examined the lined jotter pages. Immediately, Grace worried that she ought to have spent a little more of her hard-earned money on buying proper writing paper. She shook her head and promised herself that she would do just that when her four weeks of training were completed and she had moved on to a working farm.
Mrs Petrie and Mrs Brewer won’t mind, she told herself.
When had she first met them? More than half a lifetime ago but, since she was not yet twenty, half a lifetime wasn’t long. Grace sighed. Ten, eleven Christmases spent at the home of her friend Sally Brewer. Ten birthdays either with the Brewers or with the Petries. But when she thought of the Petrie family, it was not kind, comfortable Mrs Petrie or even her school friends, the twins, Rose and Daisy, who immediately came vividly to life in her mind, but Sam. Sam, who, for all she knew, might be dead.
No, he could not be dead. God would not be so cruel. She closed her eyes and immediately saw him – tall, blond, blue-eyed Sam – chasing the bullies who had pushed her down in the playground. He had picked her up, dusted her down and handed her over to his twin sisters.
So many kindnesses, and she had repaid them by slinking away, like a cat in the night, without a word of explanation or thanks. Again, Grace turned her attention to the notebook and began to write:
Dear Mrs Petrie,
I’ve joined the Women’s Land Army and I’m learning all about cows.
That unpromising beginning was torn up. She started