‘Luke! Luke!’ she protested, when he took her in his arms and held her tightly, kissing her fiercely. But she still clung to him for all that she had protested, and she returned his kiss equally passionately. War did that to you. It made you snatch at your happiness whilst you could. She had learned that. It found your weaknesses and your strengths, it made heroes and cowards out of ordinary men and women, it broke hearts and lives and tore families apart.
‘I don’t know if this has been the worst night of my life or the best,’ Luke told her, still holding her.
‘Maybe I should ask you which when we’ve been married forty years?’ Katie teased him softly, before frowning and looking up at the sky. ‘Listen.’
‘To what? I can’t hear anything.’
‘Exactly. The bombers have gone,’ she told him, laughing as the all clear started, swelling in sound until they couldn’t hear themselves speak above its noise. No sound had ever been more joyous, Katie thought, as she and Luke held each other tight.
It was five o’clock in the morning and the city of Liverpool had just endured its worst night of bombing of the war. Its worst, but not its last.
DAUGHTERS OF LIVERPOOL
Annie Groves lives in the North-West of England and has done so all of her life. She is the author of Ellie Pride, Connie’s Courage and Hettie of Hope Street, a series of novels for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her most recent novels are Goodnight Sweetheart, Some Sunny Day, The Grafton Girls, As Time Goes By and Across the Mersey, which are based on recollections from members of her family who come from the city of Liverpool. Her website, www.anniegroves.co.uk, has further details.
Annie Groves also writes under the name Penny Jordan, and is an internationally bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84,000,000 copies.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive updates on Annie Groves.
Also by Annie Groves
Ellie Pride
Connie’s Courage
Hettie of Hope Street
Goodnight Sweetheart
Some Sunny Day
The Grafton Girls
Across the Mersey
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are he work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This paperback edition 2008
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First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Annie Groves 2008
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