Terri Nixon - Evie’s Choice

Driving an ambulance through the mud in Flanders, aristocrat Evie Creswell is a long way from home. At Oaklands Manor all she had been expected to do was to look pretty and make a good marriage. But with the arrival of World War One everything changed…

And Evie, to the horror of her family, does not choose a husband from her blue-blooded set; instead she weds artist Will Davies, who works as a butcher’s apprentice. Soon she is struggling nightly to transport the wounded to hospital, avoiding the shells and gas attacks – her privileged home life, and her family’s disappointment at her marriage, a lifetime away.

And while Evie drives an ambulance in Belgium, Will is in the trenches in France. He withdraws from her, the trauma of his experience taking hold. Evie has the courage to deal with her war work, but it breaks her heart to think she is losing Will’s love. Can their marriage survive this terrible war? That is, if they both get out alive…

Evie’s Choice

Terri Nixon

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Terri Nixon 2014

Terri Nixon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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 e-book 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.

E-book Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9781472096470

Version date: 2018-07-02

TERRI NIXON

was born in Plymouth, England in 1965. At the age of 9 she moved with her family to Cornwall, to a small village on the edge of Bodmin Moor, where she discovered a love of writing that has stayed with her ever since. She also discovered apple-scrumping, and how to jump out of a hayloft without breaking any bones, but no-one's ever offered to pay her for doing those.

Since her first short stories appeared in small-press paperback in 2002, Terri has appeared in both print and online fiction collections, and is proud to have contributed to the Shirley Jackson award-nominated hardback collection: Bound for Evil, by Dead Letter Press. Her first novel was Maid of Oaklands Manor, published by Piatkus Entice, and shortlisted in the "Best Historical Read" category at the Festival of Romance 2013.

Terri now lives in Plymouth with her youngest son, and works in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Plymouth University, where she is constantly baffled by the number of students who don’t possess pens.

I would like to thank everyone who has continued to support me over this past year, and I hope this new offering has been worth it! Special thanks to my youngest son, Dom, for his patient indulgence as I look blankly at him over the lid of my laptop while my mind struggles to re-connect with day-to-day reality.

Thanks also to my agent, Kate (Kate Nash Literary Agency), to my editor, and to everyone who has worked towards getting this book to publication; the support, professionalism and advice has been invaluable.

I would also like to publicly thank the editors of Lady Under Fire on the Western Front, (the wartime letters of Lady Dorothie Feilding) which I read over and over again while planning this book, along with many other first-hand accounts of those at the ‘sharp end’ during the Great War.

And finally, to all those fallen during that conflict, and those who gave everything to help them; a sacrifice beyond imagining, a debt beyond measure.

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Endpages

About the Publisher

To my wonderful parents: Anne and Eddie Deegan. Your encouragement has been unstinting, as has your patience with my relentless blathering. This one’s for you.

Chapter One

Flanders, Belgium, February 1917.

The explosion was more than a noise, it was a pressure, and a fist, and a scream that started in the pit of my stomach and flashed outward through every nerve. Pulsing light from relentless shelling afforded glimpses through the dark of the uneven road ahead, and I had long ago learned to use this sinister glow as I guided the ambulance between dressing station and clearing station, but tonight it seemed Fritz was sending over all he had. Our chaps would give it back twice as hard though – at least that’s what I told myself, what we always told ourselves, and what we always made sure to tell the boys who looked to us for reassurance that their suffering was not in vain.

The wheels slid on half-frozen mud, and all my driving experience melted into mere hope; on a night like this it would come down to luck as to whether we stayed on the road or pitched off into the even rougher ground beyond, and luck has a famously capricious heart.

It occurred, not for the first time, that less than three years before, my prayers would have been no more intense than the wish that my mother would stop trying to marry me off to one of her friends’ “perfectly charming” sons. Even then I’d had no interest in, or need of, a husband, but it was a sobering thought that most of those adventurous and brightly confident young men would now be entrenched in mud, and finding their own prayers much altered.

Those who still lived.

I blinked hard to relieve my eyes from the strain of staring at the road, and a second later my heart faltered as I identified the cause of this latest, and loudest, of explosions. A moment later Kitty, the new girl, cried out in dismay as she saw it too: the large house ahead, and the sprawling collection of tents and outbuildings in its grounds that served as the casualty clearing station, was ablaze. Part of the roof was gone, a gaping mouth from which flames belched and licked ravenously at the overhanging trees, setting even the wettest canvas of the nearby tents alight. The painted red cross had collapsed inward, and while many of the staff retained their sense of duty, many more did not – chaos had the night in its grip now, and it was each man for himself. The two sister-stations, one empty and waiting and one already taking the overspill from the house, were in danger of catching too, and panic was evident in every silhouette that stumbled in search of safety, and in every cry that transcended the roar of flame and the crack of wood and glass.