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‘Utterly beguiling …’
—Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Sister
‘Margaret Leroy writes with candour and intelligence, capturing the menace of suddenly finding the world may not be at all as you’ve thought it’
—Helen Dunmore
‘Leroy handles … domestic life with the same graceful, precise, rueful style as [Richard Yates] the late novelist did, though with a warmer, more hopeful intelligence’
—Washington Post
‘Engrossing and affecting’
—Eve
‘Brilliant at portraying the slow, steady disintegration of a seemingly ordinary life when secrets are unearthed and dark suspicions spread’
—Baltimore Sun
‘Powerful and haunting’
—Daily Mirror
‘What a storyteller Leroy is and what an eye she has for contemporary life’
—Fay Weldon
‘[Leroy’s] quiet, self-assured narrative voice delivers tremendous psychological depth and emotional resonance’
—Kirkus Reviews
‘Leroy expertly draws a picture of a woman and a family in crisis and the moral questions one sometimes has to face’
—Toronto Sun
MARGARET LEROY studied music at Oxford. She has written four novels, one of which was televised by Granada and reached an audience of eight million. Margaret has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes, and her articles and short stories have been published in The Observer, The Sunday Express and The Mail on Sunday. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Margaret is married with two daughters and lives in London.
The Soldier’s Wife
Margaret Leroy
‘Qui veurt apprendre a priaïr, qu’il aouche en maïr.’
He who wishes to learn to pray, let him go to sea.
—Guernsey proverb
My thanks are due to my wonderfully thoughtful and perceptive editor, Maddie West, and the whole talented team at MIRA; I am especially grateful to Kim Young, Oliver Rhodes and Sue Smith, my meticulous copyeditor. Thank you as well to Brenda Copeland and Elisabeth Dyssegard at Hyperion in New York. I am also deeply grateful to my agents, Kathleen Anderson, and Laura Longrigg in London, who are so committed to my writing and who have supported me in so many ways. And thank you as always to Mick and Izzie, who shared Guernsey with me, and Becky and Steve, for so much love and encouragement.
Among the books that I read while researching this story, two deserve special mention—Madeleine Bunting’s fascinating history, The Model Occupation, and Marie de Garis’s enchanting volume, Folklore of Guernsey.
Table of Contents
Praise
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PART I: JUNE 1940
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
PART II: JULY – OCTOBER 1940
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
PART III: OCTOBER 1940 – SEPTEMBER
