The Poppy Factory

AVON

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Liz Trenow 2014

Liz Trenow 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.

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: 9780007510481

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007510498

Version: 2014-06-25

This book is dedicated to all those who have died in, or been disabled by, so many – too many – wars.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCrea, 1915

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Book Club Q&A

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

An uneasy silence fell as the plane lurched bumpily around a spiral holding pattern above Heathrow. England was somewhere below, shrouded in slate grey clouds. Even the lads had finally stopped talking.

On reaching safe airspace half an hour out of Camp Bastion, six long months of constant fear and tension had been released like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box into an eruption of shouting, singing and laughter. They’d bellowed loud boasts across the aisles detailing exactly what and how much they would drink on their first night of leave in six long dry months and bragged raucously about the sexual conquests they would make, forgetting that the two activities were usually incompatible. They’d embroidered ever more unlikely details about how they would spend their Long Overseas Allowance, the main bonus of the tour. And just a few of them, in quieter voices, had talked of family: parents and siblings, wives, girlfriends and children, the comfort of their own beds, and real, home-cooked food.

She’d come to tolerate and sometimes even enjoy the lads’ banter, their insults and juvenile pranks, their lavatory humour. She knew now that it was just the way they got through; underneath they were thoughtful human beings with the same fears as anyone else. For all their piss-taking and petty squabbling, when everything kicked off, they’d gladly give their lives for each other. Some had even done so. She ran the names through her head: Jock, Baz and Millsie.

The girls, seated together in their small group, had spent the eight hour flight reading, plugged into headphones or, like Jess, wondering what this longed-for homecoming would really be like.

She listened to the changing notes of the engine and watched the wing flaps rise and fall as the pilot adjusted his position to the instructions of unseen masters. How unearthly it felt, suspended in this grey soup of cloud with heaven knows how many other aircraft above and below, giant metal birds flying terrifyingly close to each other at hundreds of miles an hour.

In Afghanistan, she had discovered that her fear of dying seemed to be inversely proportional to the level of danger they were in: thanks to the blessed pulse of adrenaline, the more life-threatening the situation, the less frightened she felt. It was only afterwards, once they were safely back in their compound, that she found herself trembling and nauseous, realising how close to death she had come.

Now that they were so nearly home and safe, just not quite, she found her stomach churning. But it wasn’t the fear of a mid-air collision, or a crash landing. What she dreaded most, right now, was that in a few days’ time this rowdy bunch of rough-carved individuals would be split up, probably never to live and work together as a group again. Over the past six months they had become more important to each other than anyone else in the world. They’d shared such highs and such lows, seen all life and all death, supported each other through moments more extreme and more intimate than she’d ever imagined. They had become closer than any family, but now they would be going their separate ways. It felt like a small bereavement.