Lorna Cook - The Girl from the Island

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2021

Copyright © Lorna Cook 2021

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2021

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Lorna Cook asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008379063

Ebook Edition © 2021 ISBN: 9780008379070

Version: 2021-02-05

This book is dedicated to all Channel Islanders who endured the Nazi Occupation, to Jews who were transported, to those Islanders who bravely resisted and to those who were arrested, transported and who never returned.

And for Sarah.

Best friend, godmother extraordinaire and chief purveyor of twists.

Contents

Cover

Title Page THE GIRL FROM THE ISLAND Lorna Cook

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

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

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Author Note

A Note About Research

Acknowledgements

Further Reading

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lorna Cook

About the Publisher

Guernsey, Channel Islands

1945

There is a fine line between love and hate. She had tried not to cross that line, invisible as it was, but since the Germans came, she knew she had. She stood in the harbour of St Peter Port, and looked up at the town, the shops and hotels along the waterfront, the small houses nestled together in the distance. Only a few months after the liberation of her island, she breathed in the cool air of the place she’d always called home. It looked so different now but so much was the same, since the Nazis came. Since the Nazis left.

She passed along the harbour. The swastikas were gone, along with the occupying force that had placed them there. The street signs – crude wooden structures, made to inform the Germans where things were in their own language – had been taken down. At first glance, it was almost as if the war had never happened on this small stretch of the British Isles, almost as if the Germans had never been here. Except of course they had. And what they had left behind were the enormous concrete fortifications – grey scars on the landscape – that stark reminder that the Channel Islands had been part of Hitler’s Atlantic wall, part of his island madness. But what the Nazis had left behind could never compare to what they had taken.

Passengers were disembarking from a ferryboat, tourists mostly, tentatively setting foot back in the Channel Islands; back for its famous sand, its enviable sun. She was pleased the Channel Islands once again might be seen as a glorious holiday destination, the memory of what had passed in the war bleached away with the sunshine. But that wasn’t what she saw. She wondered how long it would be before she could see it that way again – how long before she would forget.

There were some things she would never forget, such as the power of a letter. Such an innocent thing, a piece of paper, but it held so much power.

Others had written similar letters; she knew that. She’d heard whispers that during the Occupation the island’s post office workers had steamed open envelopes addressed to the Germans, knowing full well that what was inside would condemn someone: a note that there was a radio hidden under floorboards here, a gun stashed in an attic there.

The power a letter held, the damage it could do. No, she knew she would never forget that.