The Second World War took both my grandfathers to Egypt. My paternal grandfather, who had command of the 6th Royal Tank Regiment at the time, was attacked in error by an RAF “tin opener,” a Hurricane fighter aircraft loaded with anti-tank cannon. Having failed to hit my grandfather’s tank on his first attempt, the Hurricane pilot fired a second pair of shells. Luckily, he missed again. My other grandfather, who was in the RAF (though not a pilot), remembered the jasmine which grew at Boulaq Bridge in Cairo. As an elderly man he told me to smell the jasmine for him when I left his house, aged twenty-two, to begin my own journey to Egypt. I didn’t see him again, and the jasmine had long gone from Boulaq Bridge, but I never forgot his words.

So I decided to make my protagonist James Acton into a Hurricane pilot, armed with anti-tank cannon, who had breathed in the scent of the jasmine at Boulaq Bridge. And to make him fall in love, in the middle of the war, with Yvette, a young, vivacious Alexandrian woman, who was brave enough to leave her home behind and make a new life with James in England.

The England of my childhood has also changed, but I am luckier than Yvette. I can still walk in the beech woods and over the chalk hills; I can still visit the church where I sang hymns as a child. Like Yvette, I lost a child, and I took refuge in the trees and hills simply because, when it seemed that everything was lost, they endured. This landscape turned into the fictional village of Upton, where James, now a priest and a widower, arrives to begin a new ministry. He does not suspect what else he will find: a startling reexamination of his past with Yvette, and an even more unexpected promise of love to come.

This is a novel about starting again after losing. It might be a country, a beloved spouse, a child, a faith. From the grave Yvette wishes her grieving husband luck, sending him onward into hope, into a new life. Au revoir mon chéri et bonne chance. Goodbye, my darling, and good luck. Pense à moi (pas trop souvent).

Think of me (not too often.)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am more grateful than I can say . . .

To my friends, the writers Alison Clink, Nikki Lloyd, and Crysse Morrison. For forensic critiques, delicious snacks, and encouragement over the years.

To my husband, Robert, first reader and cook, who called me down for dinner at 7 p.m. on the dot during the last long months of writing this book.

To my agents, Deborah Schneider in the United States and Jo Unwin in the UK, and to my editors, Tara Singh Carlson at G. P. Putnam’s Sons and Helen Garnons-Williams and Anna Kelly at 4th Estate. I could not have been better agented, edited, and supported.