Rita fought the urge to duck under the bed when the crash of gunfire filled the ward, relieved that she had already moved the patients away from the walls when a whole row of shattered windows jettisoned splintered glass onto the ward and caused the blackout blinds to flap wildly in the bitterly cold night air.
‘Turn those lights off!’ Rita yelled and suddenly the room switched to blackness. Shaking broken glass from the counterpane, Rita then beckoned a nurse to help her manoeuvre a heavy mattress over a patient who could not move from his bed. She hoped she did not look as terrified as she felt knowing that the patients and the staff were now depending on her. After an hour of reassuring patients who could not move, even singing to keep up morale, the all-clear sounded and Rita, along with the other nurses made sure that the patients were comfortably back in their beds, while broken glass was swept up and blackout blinds fixed back to the boarded-up windows. Thankfully, no patients were harmed tonight. Rita breathed a sigh of relief they had come through the awful barrage. After a round of cocoa for the shaken-up patients, there was not another peep all night.
Tired but keen to get home at the end of her shift, Rita was eager to see her children. Picking up the daily newspaper, she was also eager for any news of the Atlantic convoys and noticed the air battles seemed to dominate the news. The whole of Fighter Command had been under extreme pressure the paper said. Day after day, the Luftwaffe had targeted airfields and radar stations along the south coast, while at night they were now turning to heavy bombing raids on the larger cities.
‘Don’t we know it,’ Rita said aloud, glad that last night’s raid had been a relatively short one, knowing the rumours that a young pilot had been brought in badly injured were true. She pushed down the desire to hope he suffered as much as her own brother Frank did when his leg was amputated below the knee.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks go to my wonderful agent Teresa Chris, my editor extraordinaire, Kate Bradley, and the magnificent team at HarperCollins who all give so unstintingly of their time, expertise and brilliant advice, and without whom these stories would remain locked on my hard drive.
To my friends, Ian, Paul, John, Ali, Jackie, Dee, Frank, Emma, Lee and Michael, the Tuesday Writers of the May Logan Centre who review with alacrity. Never Give Up!
About the Author
Annie Groves was a pseudonym of the much-loved writer, Penny Halsall, who also wrote novels under the name of Penny Jordan. Penny was an international bestselling author of over 180 novels with sales of over 84 million copies. Penny was born and lived in the north-west of England all of her life and the Annie Groves novels drew on her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child.
Sadly, Penny Halsall died in 2011. She left a wonderful legacy of heart-warming novels for many more fans to discover. The final books in the Article Row series, Only a Mother Knows and A Christmas Promise, were completed posthumously by Sheila Riley, based on outlines written by Penny.
Born and raised on Merseyside, Sheila Riley is the eldest of seven children. Her parents John and Peggy took the scenic route through the many family anecdotes they shared and encouraged their daughter to do the same. At school Sheila quickly discovered her English exam grades could be improved by writing tales in the back of her exercise book, and so began her lifelong love of story-telling. Happily married to Tony, they have three grown-up children, five adorable grandchildren and a huge German Shepherd who is put in his place by a small, ancient cat called Missy.
Child of the Mersey is the first book in a new series that will feature the residents of Empire Street in Liverpool during the Second World War.
Also by Annie Groves
The Pride family series
Ellie Pride
Connie’s Courage
The WWII series
Goodnight Sweetheart
Some Sunny Day
The Grafton Girls
As Time Goes By
The Campion series
Across the Mersey
Daughters of Liverpool
The Heart of the Family
Where the Heart Is
When the Lights Go on Again
The Article Row Series
London Belles
Home for Christmas
My Sweet Valentine
A Christmas Promise
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
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Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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New Zealand
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com