The Soldier’s Wife

The Soldier’s Wife
Margaret Leroy

‘A riveting story of betrayal’ -Stylist1940, GUERNSEYVivienne de la Mare waits nervously for the bombs to drop. Instead comes quiet surrender and insidious occupation. Nothing is safe any more.As her husband fights on the front line, Vivienne’s façade as the perfect wife begins to crack. Her new life is one where the enemy lives next door. Small acts of kindness from one Nazi soldier feel like a betrayal. But how can you hate your enemy when you know his name, when he makes you feel alive, when everything else is dying around you?It’s time for Vivienne to decide: collaboration or resistance. But, in the darkest hours of history, no choices are simple.'Stunning and evocative…utterly beguiling' Rosamund Lupton

Praise for MARGARET LEROY (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)

‘Utterly beguiling …’

—Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Sister

‘Margaret Leroy writes with candour and intelligence, capturing the menace of suddenly finding the world may not be at all as you’ve thought it’

—Helen Dunmore

‘Leroy handles … domestic life with the same graceful, precise, rueful style as [Richard Yates] the late novelist did, though with a warmer, more hopeful intelligence’

—Washington Post

‘Engrossing and affecting’

—Eve

‘Brilliant at portraying the slow, steady disintegration of a seemingly ordinary life when secrets are unearthed and dark suspicions spread’

—Baltimore Sun

‘Powerful and haunting’

—Daily Mirror

‘What a storyteller Leroy is and what an eye she has for contemporary life’

—Fay Weldon

‘[Leroy’s] quiet, self-assured narrative voice delivers tremendous psychological depth and emotional resonance’

—Kirkus Reviews

‘Leroy expertly draws a picture of a woman and a family in crisis and the moral questions one sometimes has to face’

—Toronto Sun

MARGARET LEROY studied music at Oxford. She has written four novels, one of which was televised by Granada and reached an audience of eight million. Margaret has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes, and her articles and short stories have been published in The Observer, The Sunday Express and The Mail on Sunday. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Margaret is married with two daughters and lives in London.

The Soldier’s Wife

Margaret Leroy

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

‘Qui veurt apprendre a priaïr, qu’il aouche en maïr.’

He who wishes to learn to pray, let him go to sea.

—Guernsey proverb

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)

My thanks are due to my wonderfully thoughtful and perceptive editor, Maddie West, and the whole talented team at MIRA; I am especially grateful to Kim Young, Oliver Rhodes and Sue Smith, my meticulous copyeditor. Thank you as well to Brenda Copeland and Elisabeth Dyssegard at Hyperion in New York. I am also deeply grateful to my agents, Kathleen Anderson, and Laura Longrigg in London, who are so committed to my writing and who have supported me in so many ways. And thank you as always to Mick and Izzie, who shared Guernsey with me, and Becky and Steve, for so much love and encouragement.

Among the books that I read while researching this story, two deserve special mention—Madeleine Bunting’s fascinating history, The Model Occupation, and Marie de Garis’s enchanting volume, Folklore of Guernsey.

Table of Contents

Cover (#u391e0443-8723-5228-be9b-5a4c08d1c00a)

Praise

Author the Author (#u68b16a18-174b-5f06-9086-447d17bf2e65)

Title Page (#u3469954a-abc4-57b8-973d-f2cd20bd0e95)

Epigraph (#u676f6e9c-db22-5637-a34f-d2088505bed8)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART I: JUNE 1940

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11