The Secret Diary: Gripping and emotional WW2 historical fiction by Anna Stuart

Author:Anna Stuart [Stuart, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture

* * *

Thankfully the boys got cold quickly, and she was able to leave Tilly and Xavier to their own little rituals and pull her sons inside for a shower, before tucking them back into bed. She worried that the excitement of it all would make it impossible for them to go back to sleep, but thankfully the reverse seemed to be true and they both drifted off again within minutes. Lorna curled back up in her own sunrise-coloured bedroom, relishing the warmth against her still-tingling skin. Sleep, however, did not come as easily to her.

She thought of Tilly and Xavier outside and felt a rush of searing envy. Ever since Stan had gone to school last year, she and Matt had been rediscovering each other. After several years of broken nights and early mornings, things had finally stabilised and they’d been having what Matt had called a ‘glorious renaissance’. At times it had been almost like the rush of meeting someone new, and now that had all been taken from her.

It was August, so she’d gone three months without him. She supposed day-to-day living had got a little easier, but she sometimes feared that her time here in Langham was a sort of illusion, an easily lived pretence that she could go along with, but not real life. Real life was back in Norwich, looming on a not-so-rosy horizon with a September that would involve going back to school for all three of them. There would be no excuses, no leeway. However kind people were, she would be expected to ‘get on’, and quite right too. She just didn’t know if she could do it.

Even thinking about the comprehensive she taught in made her feel panicked. She loved her job. The kids were great, even the naughty ones, but you had to be on top of your game to keep in charge and she was nowhere near that. It wasn’t that they were cruel, just that they were finely tuned in to exploitable weaknesses and if they sensed there was a chance of messing about, they would most certainly take it. What if she burst into tears, or forgot what to teach, or had a panic attack, like she had with Kyle the other day?

Don’t think about it, she urged herself, opening her eyes to focus on the cerise roses. These were the very same flowers that Nancy would have stared at. Had she liked them? she wondered. She must remember to ask David. He was taking her to see Dot’s twin girls, May and June, later on this morning, so she tried to focus on what they might be able to tell her. Dot, sadly, was dead now, the same as Nancy and Peggy. Peggy’s son, William, had followed his parents into the army and retired to Hong Kong, so there would be no meeting up with him, but Dot’s daughters, now in their seventies, were still in Norwich and keen to get together.

They lived in a retirement village on the outskirts of the city; May with her husband, and widowed June with three dachshunds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.