A Strong Hand to Hold
A heartbreaking tale of love and loss in a time of war, perfect for fans of Katie Flynn and Annie Groves.Jenny O’Leary is devastated one morning in 1940 when she receives a telegram giving her the dreadful news that one of her brothers has been killed in action. Grief threatens to engulf her, but as an ARP warden, tending to Birmingham’s injured after the nightly raids, she is well-used to the suffering that thousands are enduring every day.Linda Prosser is just twelve years old and desperately close to her mother and two tiny brothers. As the bombs drop around them one fateful night, Linda takes a risk which has disastrous consequences. Terrified, and buried beneath a mass of debris after her home takes a direct hit, it is Jenny who crawls through the wreckage of the house to rescue her.So begins a friendship which is last through the years. But when Linda falls in love with a man that Jenny despises, she is faced with sacrificing her future happiness for the friend who has given her everything…
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ANNE BENNETT
A Strong Hand to Hold
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Anne Bennett 1999
First published in paperback in 1999 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb/Alison Eldred (woman); Doreen Kilfeatner/Trevillion Images (girl); Mary Evans Picture Library (houses); Shutterstock.com (airplanes, hand)
Anne Bennett 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: 9780007547760
Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007547777
Version: 2017-09-08
This book publishes in August 2014, the same month that my youngest daughter, Tamsin, gets married, so this book is dedicated with much love to Tamsin and Mark. xxx
Table of Contents
Birmingham,November1940
‘Now are you all right, Mother?’ Jenny O’Leary asked, placing the breakfast tray with the pot of tea and toast spread with the last of the jam ration across her mother’s knees as she sat before the fire.
Norah looked at her daughter with a pained expression – the one Jenny was well used to. The older woman’s furrowed brow caused deep lines to run down her face; the bun into which she had made Jenny scrape her grey hair appeared tighter than ever; and her mouth was set in a thin line. Ignoring the question, she whined, ‘The house is perishing. Put some more coal on the fire.’
Jenny suppressed a sigh, knowing she’d be late for work if she didn’t get going soon. ‘It won’t help to put more coal on, Mother,’ she said, tucking the blanket around Norah’s legs as she spoke. ‘What’s there will burn up in a minute and warm the place, and you know we have to be careful with it.’
She knew her mother wouldn’t believe her. The war was now fourteen months old, and despite Norah having four sons and a son-in-law in the fighting line, she still seemed to think a world war shouldn’t affect her life at all. Before Norah was able to make a reply, Jenny’s grandmother Eileen Gillespie came in from the kitchen.
‘Shouldn’t you be on your way?’ she snapped at Jenny. ‘Go on, I’ll see to your mother.’
But suddenly there was a knock on the door. Jenny raised her eyes to the ceiling. Who on earth would call at this hour? They weren’t expecting any parcels.
When Jenny saw the telegraph boy with the buff telegram in his outstretched hand, for a moment she couldn’t move. Her head swam and she fought against the nausea that rose in her throat. She had the urge to thrust it back at the boy, refuse to accept it, as if not to read that one of her brothers was killed or missing would mean it was untrue – a mistake.
Instead, she found herself not only taking it from him, but thanking him before she shut the door. She stood with the thing in her hand, shaking so much she couldn’t open it. Her grandmother, coming into the hall to see who’d knocked, found Jenny sitting on the stairs, arms around her legs while shudders ran through her whole body.
Eileen’s face blanched white at the sight of the crumpled telegram in Jenny’s hand and she grasped the door jamb for support as she said, almost in a whisper, ‘Who?’
Jenny shook her head mutely and Eileen grabbed the telegram from her and ripped it open. ‘Dear God!’ she wailed. ‘It’s Anthony!’
‘Missing?’ Jenny asked, and she silently cried out to the Almighty to give her some vestige of hope.
But her grandmother shook her head and went into the living room to break the news to her daughter. A howl of agony escaped from Jenny. A hard knot settled in her heart and sent spasms of pain through every part of her body; and although she cried out at the acuteness of it, her eyes stayed dry and she wondered, bleakly, how she’d get through the rest of her life without her beloved brother.
