Wartime for the District Nurses
The compelling new bestseller from the author of The Mersey Daughter and Winter on the Mersey.Alice Lake and her friend Edith have had everything thrown at them in their first year as district nurses in London’s East End. From babies born out of wedlock to battered wives, they’ve had plenty to keep them occupied.As rationing takes hold and Hitler’s bombers train their sights on London, there is no escaping the reality of being at war. Edith is trying to battle on bravely while bearing her own heartache but there’s no escaping the new terror of the bombing raids. The girls find themselves caught up in the terrible aftermath, their nursing skills desperately needed by the shaken locals on their rounds.With the men away fighting for King and country, it’s up to the nurses to keep up the Spirit of the Blitz, and everyone is counting on them…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Annie Groves 2019
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photographs © Jonathan Ring (models), Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo (background)
Annie Groves 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008272241
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008272258
Version: 2019-02-25
Many, many thanks Teresa Chris, Kate Bradley and Pen Isaac – the dream team.
Summer 1940
Edith Gillespie woke up and for a moment could not work out where she was. Her brain was too befuddled with sleep to remember and there was no light to give her a clue. She struggled to work it out.
Not in the house where she’d grown up in south London, that was for sure, because there would have been the sound of at least one of her many siblings breathing, or snoring, or sneezing. She’d never had the luxury of a room to herself for all those years, not until she’d left home to train as a nurse. She didn’t think she was in her nurses’ dormitory, though. That had been near a station and you could always hear the trains, or porters and drivers shouting. After that she’d chosen to take extra training as a district nurse, but this didn’t feel like the home in Richmond. It must be wherever she’d gone after that.
Now it all came back to her. She was at the North Hackney Queen’s Nurses home on Victory Walk, in Dalston. This was her little attic room, and the reason it was so dark was that the blackout blind was firmly in place. The country was at war, and had been for nearly a year. It was warm as it was summer, and from the birdsong outside it was already dawn. Slowly she sat up and shook her head, trying to wake up.
Her dream lingered on the fringes of her mind. The details had gone but the sensation of happiness – of being cared for – remained, and she smiled in the darkness, savouring that comforting and thrilling feeling. Somebody loved her and she loved them back.
Then she remembered and cried out despite herself. Harry was gone. Harry Banham, the most handsome and wonderful man in the world, had not made it back from Dunkirk, and she was alone. Her dream had lied. There was nobody to hug her, to hold her and tell her how beautiful she was. There was no golden future for the couple who’d attracted envious glances wherever they’d gone. The life they’d so recently begun to plan was never going to happen. Sobs came from her throat and dimly she realised that she started most of her days like this, waking in the hope of seeing Harry and then coming back to reality with a sickening bump.
Her alarm clock began to ring and she reached automatically to silence it, then crept across the rag rug to the window and pulled back a corner of the blind. Sunshine edged its way into the little room, revealing that it was far from luxurious but had all the essentials. The room of a woman who had a job to do.
Edith turned to her wardrobe. The full-length mirror on its door reflected her slight figure, with her short, dark hair sticking up from where she’d slept on it. Her dark eyes took it in and she automatically smoothed it back down. Then she took out her uniform, shaking out the creases. Time to start the day. No matter that her heart was still raw from recent bereavement. Plenty of others were in the same boat. She had to carry on as normal and do what was required of her. After all, she was a nurse.
