‘Welcome to our world. Everyone who enters has to sample our wine.’

Mags smiled up at Cyrus and caught the likeness in his looks to his half-brother, Harold, but brushed it away with a smile, as Flors put her arm round her waist. ‘We are going to toast you with a bottle from our very first batch of wine, darling Mags. Oh, it’s so good to see you.’

‘And you, Flors. I’ve thought of you both so often.’

‘I brought hell down on you, when I introduced you to Harold. Poor Mags. Your letters broke my heart. But it is all behind us now – everything that the three of us have been through. It is all in the past. The future can only be bright for us, so let’s drink to that.’

As their glasses clinked together, Mags felt at peace. Yes, they had been through a lot, but everything had come out right.

She looked over to where Jerome was laughing out loud at something Arnie had said, and a warmth entered her. Nothing was ever going to spoil this wonderful peace they had all found – nothing . . .

Letter to Readers

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking this journey with me; I hope very much that you enjoyed Mags’s story – the third in The Girls Who Went to War series.

There was no in-depth research for this novel as much of what I had discovered for the first two books in the series stood me in good stead for this one, and we have now moved on from the war. I did have the pleasurable task of driving around the lovely northern city of Blackburn and its surrounding villages to find the right places, churches, parks and villages in which to set the scenes played out in the area. I hope my descriptions do them justice. This is the kind of research that I like doing – it beats all the searching on the internet and reading books, as interesting as that is.

The first book in the series, The Forgotten Daughter, tells the story of Flora, Ella and Mags: how they met and formed a deep friendship; their extreme bravery when trapped in Brussels behind enemy lines; how they coped with running a hospital that had been abandoned; and how they made their daring escape when all the patients had been despatched. It then goes on to tell Flora’s story as Ella goes to France to continue nursing and Mags, the most damaged of the three girls, goes home to her family. Flora’s story is a love story with a difference as she is banished from her home and her fortunes wane, leaving her to face betrayal, incest and the deaths of some of those she loves most.

The second book in the series, The Abandoned Daughter, is Ella’s story. All Ella knows about her past is that she was born in Poland. Living in London with her nanny, she has desperately wanted to know who she is, but questions were always batted away. When her nanny dies, Ella is left with a diary that reveals most of the secrets of her family and she vows to visit Poland one day. In the latter part of the war she falls deeply in love with Paulo, a French soldier who suffers from the effects of inhaling gas during an attack by the Germans. Battling to save his life, Ella is left destitute and her life takes many twists and turns as she fights to save her family. Ensnared into a destructive relationship and facing once more the rejection of those who should help her, Ella is forced to make a devastating decision. If you missed either of these books, don’t worry as they all stand alone. They can be purchased at any good bookshop or online.