Category: Fantasy

Major Anderson had been wrong. The play had not been boring. It had been thrilling and a little thought-provoking and sad. Our Town was a story about Grover’s Corners, a small town in America, but really it could have been in England or France or anywhere. Maddie cried when the heroine, Emily, died. Smiled when

Although the war had moved into its sixth year, you could see the optimism on people’s faces now. The news from the different battle fronts was encouraging and it seemed to Maddie that it would take a heavy-duty miracle for the Germans to turn around defeat. And they needed to be defeated, there was no

Maddie Brady had some dates scorched into her memory. And apart from the day she’d met Rudi, they had mostly been anniversaries that heralded sadness. Now, she had another to add to this growing litany of sorrow. It was a Sunday when they heard the news. She would always remember that. And Sunday would have

Time rolled by at a brisk pace: birthdays, Christmas, New Year. And the year 1944 brought many changes with it. Rationing was still as painful as it always had been, but people were philosophical now about the sacrifices that came with fighting a war. Life was hectic for Maddie, and her duties meant that sometimes

It had been five of the longest, unhappiest days of Maddie’s life. Five days of total misery. Leaving for work alone. Coming home and passing her friend in the hallway. And Gertie giving her the cold shoulder. She’d smiled, tried to strike up a conversation, but Gertie had just given her a stare that had

If there had been a corner to be turned, Gertie had turned it. Slowly, she became less melancholy and threw herself into her ATS duties, as if she really enjoyed being a ‘skivvy’. One day, just before Christmas and the first anniversary of their arrival at Inglis Barracks, Maddie asked her friend why. Why she

It was five o’clock in the morning of a very special day. Maddie’s twenty fifth birthday. It didn’t feel much like a celebration though, and no one else in the billet even knew about it. Only Gertie, who had other things on her mind, who was still swamped by sorrow. Besides, Gertie wasn’t even there.

There was nothing they could do. That’s what the doctors had said. On the fifth of September, a day that was as black outside as the depression inside the tiny room where Maddie now sat at her friend’s bedside, Gertrude Adams had lost her baby. Its tiny heart stopped beating. The elderly doctor who examined

The screaming began as soon as the telegram arrived. Gertie didn’t open it, even though it was addressed to her. That depressing task was left to Maddie, who picked it up from the floor, where her friend had flung it. People rarely got telegrams. Normal people at least. They all knew that, and a couple