Alex Brown - The Secret of Orchard Cottage - The feel-good number one bestseller

‘Ooh, yes please Mum,’ Winnie said, knowing better than to refuse, given that the rationing of bacon had come into force last year. Nerves and anticipation had seen to her appetite, but Winnie knew that her mother had saved the rashers, cut as generously as could be afforded during war time by Bessie up in Cooper’s the butchers’ shop in the High Street, especially for her farewell breakfast, just as she had for each of her brothers. So it would be churlish to turn it down and risk the wrath of her father who was a stickler for citing that old adage of ‘waste not want not’ and gratitude really was next to godliness, as far as he was concerned.

Winnie poured herself some tea from the knitted tea-cosied pot before smoothing a starched white linen napkin into her lap – her mother always liked to look her best and to keep an immaculate home too, and certainly saw ‘no reason to let standards slip just because Hitler has seen fit to turn our lives upside down’, as she frequently reminded them all. Their father begged to differ, and said that it was Delphine’s chic French ancestry that made her a perfect petal amidst the ‘ruddy-cheeked horrors’ that he had grown up with toiling the fields surrounding Tindledale. Talking of which, both parts of the kitchen stable back door burst open and George appeared, stamping the mud from his boots on to the mat before pulling Delphine towards him for a hearty morning kiss.

‘Ew! Enough of that,’ Delphine shooed him away, pretending to chastise. ‘You’ll make my face all mucky and that really won’t do when we venture up to the village square later on.’

‘Don’t worry about that – handsome woman like you. You’re the best looker in Tindledale!’ George puffed out his chest as he reluctantly let go of his wife. Delphine patted her neatly prepared pin curls back into place.

‘You always were a charmer, George.’ Delphine pecked his cheek, before bringing proceedings back to the importance of the day. ‘Now, there’s a fresh shirt hanging in the wardrobe next to your good suit. But first …’ Delphine delivered two perfectly poached eggs on to a plate, ‘eat your breakfast up!’ And she smiled contentedly. Delphine was in her element and at her happiest when feeding and fussing over her family.

‘Right you are,’ George replied, doing as he was told. He sat at the kitchen table and popped the filmy yolk of an egg with the corner of a hunk of home-baked crusty bread. ‘Want to look my best too for waving off our Winnie,’ he added, winking at his eldest daughter. ‘It’s been smashing having you home again for a bit love, and so grown up you are now.’

Winnie smiled; she wasn’t the naïve girl she used to be. Not like she was when she first went off to the Land Army at the start of the war. But so much had changed since then … courting for starters, that had come as a pleasant surprise. And quite unexpected too. She smiled at the memory of that morning when she first met him – she’d just finished showing the girls how to crate the apples correctly, when someone from the nearby army base at Market Briar had requested a volunteer who could drive.

‘And it’s not every day one of our own gets chosen for driving duties,’ George went on. ‘For the top brass no less. I knew my showing you how to drive would come in handy one day.’ He punctuated the air with the prongs of his fork. ‘You didn’t even know how to switch on the apple lorry’s engine before I showed you.’ He took another big bite of his bread.

‘Daaad.’ Winnie gave him a pretend exasperated look. ‘It’s hardly the same – an open-back truck crammed full of apples bobbing all over the place every time the tyres hit a pothole. No, the “top brass”, as you call them, enjoy a very smooth ride in a proper car, thank you very much.’ Winnie took a sip of her tea and pondered again on her good fortune in having spent the last couple of months in and out of the army base where she had been noticed, something that never would have happened if she’d stayed milking cows and digging for victory in the fields with the other girls.

‘You’ll be driving ambulances now though!’ Edie blithely chipped in, before turning her attentions back to the infinitely more interesting dollop of homemade blackberry jam that she had just let plop from a knife on to her toast. Winnie turned to study her little sister, half wishing that she still possessed Edie’s innocent view of the world. But there was a war on, and already Winnie had seen first hand the real effect it was having on the country. What her parents didn’t know was that one of Winnie’s driving duties had taken her to Brighton – she hadn’t wanted to alarm them with accounts of what she saw there, preferring they enjoy their still near-idyllic lives out here in the countryside – but the devastation that the German bomb had caused when it landed on the cinema in Kemp Town would stay with Winnie for always, especially the four children amongst the fifty-five people who were killed.

‘And doesn’t she look a picture in her uniform?’ Delphine joined in, smoothing a proud hand over Winnie’s right shoulder with a formidable look on her face, as if warning the tiniest speck of fluff to so much as dare go near her daughter’s immaculate jacket.

‘Indeed she does,’ George nodded, equally proud.

*

As the emerald green and cream split-window Bedford bus chugged away from the village square, Edie dashed after it, along with several other girls from the village, all waving white cotton hankies with stoic smiles fixed firmly in place as they treasured last glimpses, potentially, of their soldier sweethearts. But it was different for Edie: she loved her big sister, of course she did, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a tiny bit gleeful that Winnie had signed up to join the FANY, driving ambulances and doing first aid, and it wasn’t as if she was going somewhere really dangerous like her brothers. No, Winnie would be having the time of her life at the training centre, and it wasn’t for ever. Winnie would be back before they knew it, which was why Edie didn’t feel quite so bad for having already boxed up all her belongings ready to move into her big sister’s bedroom for the duration. After their parents’ room, which was set at the front of the cottage overlooking the single-track lane, Winnie’s attic bedroom, with its very own pastel-pink vanity unit and dual-aspect windows with views of the surrounding fields, really was the perfect place to be in Orchard Cottage.

In the bedroom of a 1930s bungalow in Basingstoke, April Wilson slipped off her pink hand-knitted cardy and placed it back on the padded hanger before putting it away inside the wardrobe – managing, as she had become accustomed to doing, to avoid making eye contact with her late husband’s shirts still hanging neatly on his half of the hanging rail.

Graham had died eighteen months ago. Motor neurone disease. Ten years her senior, but with a zest for life befitting a far younger man, Gray had been the proverbial life and soul of the party until the cruel disease had taken hold, and then when his breathing muscles had degenerated so severely, he had slipped away one night in his sleep. And April would always be grateful for that. Having given up her nursing career to care for Gray, it had been his wish right from the start, on that sad, drizzly autumn day in the consultant’s room at the hospital when the diagnosis had first been given, to be at home in his own bed when the end came.

‘Only me,’ the effervescent voice of April’s stepdaughter, Nancy, cut through her reverie as the door opened slowly. ‘Sorry, am I disturbing you? Only these arrived a few minutes ago addressed to Mrs Wilson.’ And a gorgeous array of vibrant red and orange roses appeared in the gap between the door and the frame.