Lissa Evans

When Noel Bostock – aged ten, no family - is evacuated from London to escape the Blitz, he ends up living in St Albans with Vera Sedge - thirty-six and drowning in debts and dependents. Always desperate for money, she’s unscrupulous about how she gets it and sometimes dangerous. Noel may have been moved to safety, but he isn’t actually safe at all…

This is the story of two disparate characters in a small Midlands town: Paul is a young, newly-qualified hospital doctor, and Netta is returning to help her family move house. When Paul vomits on Netta's shoes one morning, the consequences are not only messy but extraordinarily far-reaching.

It is 1928. Matilda Simpkin, rooting through a cupboard, comes across a small wooden club – an old possession of hers, unseen for more than a decade. During the Women’s Suffrage Campaign she was a militant. Jailed five times, she marched, sang, gave speeches, and nothing since then has given her the same excitement. Now in middle age, she is still looking for a fresh mould into which to pour her energies. Giving the wooden club a thoughtful twirl, she is struck by an idea...

It is 1940. France has fallen, the war could go either way and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help write women in propaganda films - something that the men aren't very good at.

It's late 1944. Hitler's rockets are slamming down on London with vicious regularity and it's the coldest winter in living memory. Allied victory is on its way, but it's bloody well dragging its feet. In a large house next to Hampstead Heath, Vee Sedge is just about scraping by, with a herd of lodgers to feed, and her young charge Noel ( almost fifteen ) to clothe and educate. When she witnesses a road accident and finds herself in court, the repercussions are both unexpectedly marvellous and potentially disastrous - disastrous because Vee is not actually the person she's pretending to be, and neither is Noel. The end of the war won't just mean peace, but discovery...