Cover

About the Author

HELEN YENDALL has had dozens of short stories and a serial published in women’s magazines over the past twenty years and now writes female-focused WW2 novels. She’s a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

She studied English and German at Leeds University and has worked in a variety of roles: for a literary festival, a university, a camping club, a children’s charity and in marketing and export sales. But her favourite job is the one she still has: teaching creative writing to adults.

Although a proud Brummie by birth, Helen now lives in the North Cotswolds with her husband and cocker spaniel, Bonnie. When she’s not teaching or writing, she likes reading, swimming, tennis and walking in the beautiful countryside where she lives.

A Wartime Secret

HELEN YENDALL

Dedication

For Mum and Dad

Chapter 1

London, September 1940

Maggie Corbett lay face down on the open platform of the number 56 bus, the heel of another passenger’s shoe an inch from her nose. It was a man’s black brogue, probably about the same size as her dad’s: a nine or ten. She watched it, ready to jerk her head back if it looked likely to move.

The siren, that awful banshee wail that she’d never get used to, had gone off ten minutes after she’d boarded at Poplar. She shouldn’t have been surprised but, blimey, of all the mornings for it to happen!

It had been standing room only and they’d already been running behind, diverted due to rubble and craters from last night’s raids. If they weren’t all about to be blown to smithereens, she was going to be late on her first day and covered in dirt, into the bargain.

Her clothes must be filthy. She was stretched out, her head in her hands, her face two inches from the grimy, footprint-covered floor. What had been the point of carefully darning her best stockings last night, sponging down her mac and pressing her white blouse? She needn’t have bothered.

Two minutes earlier, she’d flung herself to the floor as the clippie, frantically pressing the bell, had yelled, ‘Oh Gawd! Everyone down! There’s a nasty old man in the sky dropping stones!’ Then the clippie had hitched up her slacks and got down on the floor herself.

The driver had veered to the side of the road and braked heavily, sending people flying.

A gas mask, in its cardboard box, fell onto Maggie’s hand, making her grimace. An elderly woman to one side and a uniformed soldier on the other were struggling to find room to lie down. Maggie tried not to mind too much as she was shoved and prodded by elbows and knees.