Home for Christmas (28 page)

Witnessing the look of barely suppressed excitement and anticipation on Tilly’s face, Olive’s heart filled with a mixture of love and nostalgia. In her heart Tilly was still her little girl, the little girl she had filled so many Christmas stockings for, and yet the reality was that Tilly was now a young woman, carrying on one of the traditions Olive had created so lovingly for her. Gripped by the maternal ache of her own emotions when Drew was the first of the young men to step forward – a twinkle in his eye and an expression on his face that said that not only did he understand his role but also that he was fully prepared to play it – Olive was torn between gratitude for the fact that Tilly was involved with a young man who so obviously thought a great deal of her, and anxiety over the growing strength of feelings she suspected that Tilly and Drew had for one another.

‘What’s this?’ Drew demanded, giving Tilly a teasing look as she took his stocking from Sally and started to hand it to him.

‘It’s from Father Christmas,’ Tilly told him, trying to keep her face straight, ‘but you can only have it if you’ve been good.’

The sound of Drew and Tilly’s laughter as they mock-wrestled with the stocking had the three other young men coming forward so that they too could receive their stockings.

Whilst Dulcie’s manner was studiedly off hand and ‘grown up’ as she handed Wilder his, when he discovered the pack of cards tucked inside it and immediately started to shuffle them, acknowledging that they were ‘a real nice pack’, she immediately dropped her pose and told him firmly, ‘I knew you’d like them.’

‘Liquorice?’ George smiled at Sally. ‘My favourite.’ But it was the look in his eyes as he read the special note she had written for him that said what he was really feeling, and the touch of his hand as he reached for and squeezed hers.

‘We always have Christmas stockings at home. It’s one of our traditions.’

‘And now it will be one of ours,’ Sally promised him. One day, one Christmas, please God, a long time from now, when their own children were old enough to understand, they would gather round their own fireplace and she would tell them about the first Christmas she had shared with their father. But not perhaps about the note she had written for him. Some things were too special and private ever to be shared with anyone else.

The second Christmas of the war, Olive thought painfully. Twelve months in which there had been so much to bear and so many lives lost: Dunkirk, with those poor young men coming back looking so beaten and defeated; the Battle for Britain, when the country had held its breath, knowing that only the skill of the few stood between them and German invasion, and then the start of the Blitz.

How much more destruction and death would the coming year bring?

‘Mum, can I have another mince pie. Please?’

Automatically Olive switched her thoughts from her private anxiety to the reality of the present. Her home was filled with young people who were safe and well and happy, and that surely was worth celebrating and worth being thankful for. A true Christmas gift to be appreciated and welcomed. The very best of Christmas gifts in fact.

Acknowledgements

Susan Opie, and Victoria Hughes-Williams, my editors at HarperCollins.

Yvonne Holland, copy editor extraordinaire, who, as always, has done a magnificent job.

All those at HarperCollins whose hard work enabled this book to reach publication.

Tony, who contributed so much to my books via the research he did for me.

About the Author

Annie Groves lives in the North-West of England and has done so all her life. She is the author of
Ellie Pride
,
Connie’s Courage
and
Hettie of Hope Street
, a series of novels for which she drew upon her own family’s history, picked up from listening to her grandmother’s stories when she was a child. Her most recent novels are
Goodnight Sweetheart
,
Some Sunny Day
,
The Grafton Girls
,
As Time Goes By
,
Across the Mersey
,
Daughters of Liverpool
,
The Heart of the Family
,
Where the Heart Is
and
When the Lights Go on Again
, which are based on recollections from members of her family who come from the city of Liverpool.
Home for Christmas
follows on from
London Belles
and is the second in this new series, which introduces a set of glorious characters that live in London. Her website, www.anniegroves.co.uk has further details.

Annie Groves also writes under the name Penny Jordan, and is an internationally bestselling author of over 170 novels with sales of over 84,000,000 copies.

Copyright

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.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

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This paperback edition 2011

1

Copyright © Annie Groves 2011

Annie Groves 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

ISBN: 978-0-00-736151-9

EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007419395

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