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THE GIRL FROM THE ISLAND
Lorna Cook
Published by AVON
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2021
Copyright © Lorna Cook 2021
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 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
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