My Name is Eva An absolutely gripping and emotional historical novel - Suzanne Goldring Page 0,2

you, my darling, if I thought it would help) but I do so want to ‘do my bit’. I wish you would change your mind and agree that I should join the Wrens or something. I don’t see how that could be an unsuitable occupation for your wife, and it certainly couldn’t be any more dangerous than staying here in London in the flat. I must say, I really rather like the Wrens uniform – well, their darling little hats, at least.

If things in London get much worse I may make the effort to spend more nights at Kingsley (though if I do, Mama will never leave off asking me to stay), but don’t ask me to abandon my London life completely, as it helps me to feel more like a proper grown-up married woman while you are away in France.

In your last letter you asked me to look after McNeil when he arrives in London, so I have alerted Grace and Audrey as they are not sweethearts with any fellows as yet and will be eager to take him under their ‘wings’ as it were. I hope he will be man enough to withstand their enthusiastic attentions!

Well, darling, I must sign off now as Miss Harper has been giving me stern looks for at least five minutes. She clearly thinks I should have finished my lunch break and returned to my work. What she would think if she realised I was using company paper as well, I dread to think.

Your ever-loving wife,

Evie xxxxxxx

Ps I love you

3

Mrs T-C, 6 October 2016

Everything In Its Place

Evelyn’s room at Forest Lawns has a view of the garden. She was determined that if she had to live in a care home then she would not be completely separated from her lifelong love of gardening. She might no longer be able to kneel to weed herbaceous borders, hack at overgrown honeysuckle or double-dig a vegetable plot, but she can still offer advice on the pruning code for different varieties of clematis, suggest the removal of old hellebore leaves to reveal the budding flowers or recommend a supplement to improve a sickly yellow camellia. But now she wonders, should this knowledge also still be within her grasp?

She stands by the window gazing at the small improvements, which have been made at her suggestion since her arrival early in the year, after that final critical fall. The hot late-summer border filled with blood-red crocosmia, orange heleniums and burgundy sunflowers was a great success after just one season. Under the oldest oak tree a newly planted carpet of pale narcissi will emerge in spring, but for now a sprinkling of deep-pink miniature cyclamen brings a shot of colour to that corner of the garden.

But do I really have to pretend I can’t remember the Latin name for wormwood or the right time to plant tulip bulbs? And am I going to have to act as if all that preciously grown knowledge is now lost to me?

A gardener is blowing the fallen leaves into heaps, then scooping them up with two boards between his hands into a barrow. She can see a thin stream of smoke spiralling from the farthest corner of the grounds. He should be composting those leaves, she thinks. Leaf mould is so good for the garden. Helped me establish lily-of-the-valley in several awkward spots.

But Pat is coming soon for her afternoon visit and Evelyn must be ready. She tidies a hair that has strayed from her weekly shampoo and set, looking at her reflection in the mirror of the dressing table that stood in her mother’s bedroom for as long as she can remember, oh, ninety years probably. It must be well over a hundred and fifty years old. The mirror is framed in a mahogany stand, and has three sections, with a little drawer in the middle for Evelyn’s hairpins and odd buttons. She opens it every day, after the cleaner has whisked around the room with her duster, to check that a particularly special button is still there, untouched in its little box.

On either side, on the polished surface, on linen mats embroidered by a long-dead relative, are silver brushes and a sturdy hatpin, which Evelyn tells everyone is an old letter opener. They’d never guess why it was issued to her and she laughs inside at comments about such an indelicate hatpin. On the middle mat lies a silver-backed mirror, engraved with the initials M.M.H., matching those on the brushes. ‘Mama’s initials,’