The air is still, and the sun warms the skin of her bare arms. Not twenty yards away, she sees the two bleach-white stones. Dignified in their simplicity, they stand apart from the grey angels and urns of the civilian monuments. Her pace slows as she approaches but her pulse quickens. She focuses on the name on one of the headstones. A warm breeze brushes the fair hairs on her arms, and she feels him close by. She kneels on the neatly maintained square of grass and runs her fingers over the grooves of his name, of his regiment and of the date he died; one hundred years ago to the day. Her heart fills with love, with sadness and with pride. She understands now what she couldn’t a few months ago; they had to sacrifice their love to save their families.

The handful of locals in the cemetery tending graves hear a moped buzz in the distance, they hear grasshoppers chirp in the neighbouring field. But the young woman hears none of them. She takes an envelope from her bag, postmarked December 2013. She opens a letter and reads it aloud. In two weeks’ time, she will become a trainee teacher in a school in a town in central England. A school that needs good teachers and where she can make a difference. Carefully, she slips a book from her bag. The leather is warm to the touch. She opens the pages and begins to softly read aloud. The few people that hear her voice don’t understand her foreign tongue and pay her no mind.

When the warmth leaves the day, and the sun begins to dip, she takes a grubby white handkerchief from her pocket and unfurls it to reveal a small, wilted flower picked in a garden in another country. Placing a wild rose at the base of the headstone, she closes her eyes and leans forward to kiss his name. The breeze whispers past her ear. She bites her lip. She doesn’t want him to see her cry. When she stands, the pattern of grass criss-crosses her knees. She looks at his name one last time before turning away. This parting is only temporary. She knows that one day, they will meet again.

Acknowledgements

In the same way that it takes a village to raise a child, so a writer needs many supporters to make a book.

Thank you Zoe Antoniades, Sam Hanson, Susie Lynes and John Rogers for being there from the first wobbly prologue.

Thank you to all of my beta readers – especially Kim G, my yardstick – my writing tutor, Sara Bailey, and to everyone at Bombshell Books for seeing something in A Time to Change.

Thank you to Charles for the inspiration and to Charlotte for the name.

And most of all, thank you to Pete, my cheerleader-in-chief.

A note from the publisher