In Another Time

First published in the USA by HarperTeen,

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. in 2018

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018

Published in this ebook edition in 2018

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Caroline Leech 2018

Cover © Harper Collins Children’s Books 2018

Cover design by Aurora Parlagreco

Cover art by RekhaArcangel/Arcangel (girl) and Rixipix/Getty Images (background)

Typography by Aurora Parlagreco

Caroline Leech 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.

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 onscreen. 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: 9780008249151

Ebook Edition © July 2018 ISBN: 9780008249168

Version: 2018-07-24

To the lumberjills who served in the Women’s Timber Corps in the forests of Scotland 1942–1946

To Perryn, Jemma, Kirsty, and Rory

You are my everything

John Anderson, my jo, John,

We clamb the hill thegither,

And mony a canty day, John,

We’ve had wi ane anither;

Now we maun totter down, John,

But hand in hand we’ll go,

And sleep thegither at the foot,

John Anderson, my jo.

from “John Anderson, My Jo”

ROBERT BURNS, 1759–1796

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Books by Caroline Leech

About the Publisher

WOMEN’S TIMBER CORPS TRAINING CENTER,

SHANDFORD LODGE, BRECHIN, ANGUS

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14^>TH, 1942

Maisie’s shoulders burned, her palms were torn, and her ax handle was smeared with blister pus and blood. Again.

The woods were airless today, and it made the work even harder than usual. As a bead of sweat ran down from Maisie’s hair toward her eye, she stopped to wipe her forehead with the sleeve of her blouse, knowing she’d probably just added yet another muddy streak to those already across her face. Maisie wondered how on earth she’d be able to get herself looking presentable enough to go to a dance by seven o’clock. She’d only be dancing with her friends, but still, she didn’t want it to look like she’d spent the week up to her knees in dirt and wood chippings. Which, of course, she had.

Perhaps it was just as well there was no chance that some handsome chap would ask her to dance. She would bet a week’s wages—all thirty-seven shillings of it—that there were none of them left in Brechin these days, not since every man aged between eighteen and forty had been called up to the war.

Maisie stood and stretched out her back, pretending to study the tree she was attempting to chop down. When would this constant ache disappear? Even after two weeks of learning how to fell, split, saw, and sned, she still woke up each morning feeling like she’d gone ten rounds in the ring with a heavyweight champion. She had blisters on her hands from the tools—four-and-a-half-pound axes, six-pound axes, crosscut saws, hauling chains, and cant hooks—and blisters on her feet from her work boots. There were even blisters between her thighs where the rough material of her uniform chafed as she worked.

“I bet the WAAF and ATS recruits don’t hurt this badly all through their training,” she moaned to her friend Dot, who was working two trees over. “I still think the recruitment officer lied to me. She made it sound like the Women’s Timber Corps would be a walk in the park.”

“Or perhaps a walk”—Dot flailed her ax again toward the foot of her own tree—“in the forest.”

“Very funny,” Maisie replied, then blew gingerly onto her stinging fingers. “Bloody hell, that hurts!” She pulled out her once-white handkerchief and dabbed at her hands, hoping to feel some comfort from the soft, cool cotton, and watched Dot swing the ax a couple more times. Again and again Dot’s blade seemed to bounce off the wood as if it were made of India rubber, exposing no more of the creamy flesh under the brown bark than had been visible five minutes before.

Maisie glanced behind her to see if their instructor, Mr. McRobbie, was watching, but he was talking to another recruit farther up the line of trees, so she let her ax-head rest on the ground. She had been issued this six-pound ax when training began, but right now, it felt like a forty-pound sledgehammer. She reached into her pocket and withdrew her whetstone, the smooth flat stone she used to set her blade. Mr. McRobbie had drummed into them the importance of having a whetstone with them at all times, to keep the cutting edge sharp and clean, but Maisie had discovered another use for it. She laid the stone, warm from her body heat, onto the blisters of her hands one by one, sighing as the discomfort was eased, if only for a few seconds.