Once Jim and his fellow officers had passed on this devastating news to their men, the previously carefree mood had soured into resentment and bitter disappointment, and the beach became deserted as the men sought solitude to try and digest what these new orders meant for them and their long-suffering families. Silence seemed to prevail throughout the camp, and eventually a long, muted queue began to slowly form outside the communications hut to send this devastating news to their loved ones at home.

Jim had joined the queue, sick at heart, the weight of disappointment lying heavily in his gut as he tried to decide how to word the telegram to Peggy. She would be as disappointed as he to learn he’d miss yet another Christmas, and although the message would have to be necessarily short because censorship was still the order of the day, he would sit down tonight and write her a long letter to try and explain as well as he was permitted why he wouldn’t be coming home. He certainly didn’t want her to hear what SEAC were up to through news broadcasts or in the papers, but however much he wanted to protect her from hurt, there was absolutely no way around it.

Having sent the telegram he knew would bring her terrible grief, Jim had pushed his way back through the queue that now stretched all along the beach, and tramped over the sand, his eyes blinded with unshed, angry tears. Reaching the small, secluded cove at the far end, he’d slumped down into a fold of the dunes, wrapped his arms about his knees and stared out at the shimmering vista before him.

But instead of a sparkling blue sea he saw the choppy waters of the English Channel which splashed on Cliffehaven’s pebbled beach, and where the sky was bleached by the sun and hazy with heat, there was only the dark grey of English skies, and the gathering clouds of a winter storm.

Jim buried his head in his arms and silently wept.

Part One

1

Cliffehaven

Beach View Boarding House stood three terraces back from the promenade, and was one of the many Victorian villas that lined the steep hill on the eastern side of Cliffehaven. Despite its name, the only view of the beach was from the room on the top floor, the others looking down into the back garden which had been turned into a vegetable plot or at the roofs of the other houses.

Three storeys high above the basement rooms, and once quite elegant, it now showed the scars of wartime in the patched roof, pitted stucco and shattered steps which led up to the rather battered front door – but at least it was still standing, which was more than could be said for some of the surrounding villas. A gas explosion had devastated two neighbouring houses at the end of Beach View Terrace; a V-1 had destroyed the house behind, and one cul-de-sac further down had been obliterated by a V-2.