Lorna Cook

The Girl from the Island


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      THE GIRL FROM THE ISLAND

      Lorna Cook

Avon. Logo

       Copyright

      Published by AVON

      A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2021

      Copyright © Lorna Cook 2021

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

      Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

      Lorna Cook 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 ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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: 9780008379063

      Ebook Edition © 2021 ISBN: 9780008379070

      Version: 2021-02-05

       Dedication

      This book is dedicated to all Channel Islanders who endured the Nazi Occupation, to Jews who were transported, to those Islanders who bravely resisted and to those who were arrested, transported and who never returned.

      And for Sarah.

      Best friend, godmother extraordinaire and chief purveyor of twists.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Prologue

      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

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       Chapter 33

       Chapter 34

       Chapter 35

       Chapter 36

       Chapter 37

       Chapter 38

       Chapter 39

       Chapter 40

       Chapter 41

       Epilogue

       Author Note

       A Note About Research

       Acknowledgements

       Further Reading

       Keep Reading …

       About the Author

       Also by Lorna Cook

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      Guernsey, Channel Islands

      1945

      There is a fine line between love and hate. She had tried not to cross that line, invisible as it was, but since the Germans came, she knew she had. She stood in the harbour of St Peter Port, and looked up at the town, the shops and hotels along the waterfront, the small houses nestled together in the distance. Only a few months after the liberation of her island, she breathed in the cool air of the place she’d always called home. It looked so different now but so much was the same, since the Nazis came. Since the Nazis left.

      She passed along the harbour. The swastikas were gone, along with the occupying force that had placed them there. The street signs – crude wooden structures, made to inform the Germans where things were in their own language – had been taken down. At first glance, it was almost as if the war had never happened on this small stretch of the British Isles, almost as if the Germans had never been here. Except of course they had. And what they had left behind were the enormous concrete fortifications – grey scars on the landscape – that stark reminder that the Channel Islands had been part of Hitler’s Atlantic wall, part of his island madness. But what the Nazis had left behind could never compare to what they had taken.

      Passengers were disembarking from a ferryboat, tourists mostly, tentatively setting foot back in the Channel Islands; back for its famous sand, its enviable sun. She was pleased the Channel Islands once again might be seen as a glorious holiday destination, the memory of what had passed in the war bleached away with the sunshine. But that wasn’t what she saw. She wondered how long it would be before she could see it that way again – how long before she would forget.

      There were some things she would never forget, such as the power of a letter. Such an innocent thing, a piece of paper, but it held so much