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When We Meet Again

Caroline Beecham
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  52. POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
  53. When We Meet Again
  54. A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
  55. Discussion Guide
  56. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  57. What’s next onyour reading list?

Cover

Cover for When We Meet Again

Dedication

This book is for the Brighton girls—Amanda, Becky, Gill, Lisa and Vicky—for your love and friendship

Epigraph

If you cannot read [all your books], at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their selves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances.

—Winston S. Churchill

People die, but books never die. . . . No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Prologue

Brighton, March 18, 1943

Alice woke with a start, seagulls screeching from the gabled rooftop. The dawn glow bled through uneven curtains, illuminating the white wicker crib that stood only a few feet away. She was curled on her side at the very edge of the bed, eye level with the crib, which sat beside the splintered paintwork of the windowsill.

Her lips curved into a smile. She needed to nurse Eadie now, just as the midwife had shown her the day after the birth. Alice tried to ease herself up onto one elbow, but her limbs were so weak with tiredness that her arm wouldn’t support her, and she collapsed back onto the pillow. Everything was so tranquil; Eadie must still be sleeping—this most precious time preserved—and all Alice could hear was her own breathing. It was clear that no one else in the guesthouse was awake.

Her lips twitched into a half smile as she wondered if her daughter would always be so calm when she slept; her mother had told her that she’d snored like a grown man.

Alice pushed herself up again, trying to ignore the soreness and discomfort as she carefully swung her legs around and levered up with both hands. With eyes alight, she beamed in anticipation as she tilted forward, ready to see her newborn, her face hovering over the crib—but when she looked down, it was empty.

Her eyes flashed wide in horror, staring unblinking at the wrinkled crib sheet and white crocheted blanket flung over the sides.

The sound of traffic intruded from the road outside as the clock hands carried on their twin journeys, and several moments passed before Alice regained the capacity to think, running her fingers across the place where Eadie’s tiny swaddled body had lain.

It was stone cold.

Was her mind playing tricks on her? Could she be hallucinating, even though they had refused her any pain relief?