The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!

The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!
S C Worrall

‘A love story told in exquisitely poetic letters’ DAILY MAILTorn apart by war, their letters meant everything…‘My love. I am writing to you without knowing where you are but I will find you after all these long months…’3rd September 1938. Martin Preston is in his second year of Oxford when his world is split in two by a beautiful redhead, Nancy Whelan. A whirlwind romance blossoms in the Buckinghamshire countryside as dark clouds begin to gather in Europe.3rd September 1939. Britain declares war on Germany. Martin is sent to the battlefields of France, but as their letters cross the channel, he tells Nancy their love will keep him safe. Then, one day, his letters stop.3rd September 1940. It’s four months since Nancy last heard from Martin. She knows he is still alive. And she’ll do anything to find him. But what she discovers will change her life forever…

S. C. WORRALL was born in Wellington, England and spent his childhood in Eritrea, Paris, and Singapore. Since 1984, he has been a full-time freelance journalist and book author. He has written for National Geographic, GQ, The Times and the Guardian. He has also made frequent appearances on Radio and TV, including the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent; NPR and PBS. He speaks six languages and has lived in or visited more than 70 countries. The Very White of Love is his debut novel.

Copyright (#ulink_18ef937b-a9f5-5979-86bb-74a94d0473e9)

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Simon Worrall 2018

Simon Worrall 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.

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.

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Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008217525

Version: 2018-09-17

For Nancy and Martin

Je lève mon verre

Her hands are clasped in the blue mantle of heaven

And the sea, her haven, is flecked with the white of love

‘OUR TRUE BEGINNINGS’ BY WREY GARDINER

Foreword (#ulink_a09934be-39f4-50fe-98e9-efcb19d17cd6)

It was decorated with red roses and tied with a piece of red ribbon, a battered, cardboard chocolate box at the bottom of my mother’s wardrobe. I lifted the box out and put it on the bed next to a pile of her clothes we were donating to charity. Inside were bundles of love letters, yellow with age, tightly bound with string, fastened with tiny knots, as if those knots alone could hold them in place.

Back at my cottage in Herefordshire, I erected a makeshift altar in the window of my study, which overlooked the pub garden and the Black Mountains beyond. For an altar cloth I laid one of my mother’s favourite blue shawls over the top of a chest of drawers, placed a vase of wild flowers and some mementos of her life: a silver bracelet she had bought in Singapore; some of her notebooks and poems; a photograph of her, aged five, sitting with a white, cotton bonnet on her head, in a field of daisies. At the back of this improvised altar, I placed the box of letters and two white candles.

Her death was still new and raw. So the box lay unopened for almost two weeks. I sat by the kitchen window watching the river flow past, hoping it could take my sadness with it. I was a motherless child in my fifties. Divorced. Anchorless. Winter was coming. I went for long, lonely walks across frost-covered hills. In the evening, I doused myself with wine and nicotine, falling asleep to the sound of otters whistling on the riverbank, under a moon that shone like a silver penny on a bolt of black satin.

Then, one rainy afternoon when I was stuck indoors, I untied the knots.

Contents

Cover (#u38b8f20f-5ad5-5a4d-87e4-240a103d6d38)

About the Author (#udcc6c011-8737-5a7d-bf44-6d95f9a20fc4)

Title Page (#u6839532d-1f4a-5cb3-843d-318e1e5f4fbb)

Copyright (#ulink_db103bd7-67d7-54a8-bf76-328b9891fa63)

Dedication (#uf0d2882d-2e1e-5db2-b328-ea3a4f8962ce)

Epigraph (#uf4280d02-ecb3-5ca4-8a60-97d075ba2319)

Foreword (#ulink_fdccea48-9c67-5e6f-8d55-90f78aa0f4af)

Part One (#ulink_5616d26a-38fe-5267-8922-68a94040b564)

19 SEPTEMBER 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_fce1d7c3-3066-521a-99f9-b6a57239e802)

14 OCTOBER 1938: Oxford (#ulink_273cc46f-574e-5be6-92c9-30244f8c56d8)

22 OCTOBER 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_fb8c1956-55d8-5516-b231-c59408c68ce0)

12 NOVEMBER 1938: London (#ulink_2e0d570b-c4c8-5ab3-a304-d8fc9cdf1ae2)

CHRISTMAS EVE 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_04993e93-b58f-510b-afc1-56b7774dc6c6)

12 FEBRUARY 1939: Oxford (#ulink_f787dbcc-5833-5048-8d4b-5b432ca0aa16)

25 APRIL 1939: The Oxford Union (#ulink_765659ef-0c76-5966-9097-7b787356ade1)

25 JUNE 1939: The River Isis, near Oxford (#ulink_39ee9e77-bb9e-5a32-9ba2-d42802d40a09)

3 AUGUST 1939: Whichert House (#ulink_08396f75-e7ec-5e81-a9fe-82b174ca244c)

5 AUGUST 1939: Whichert House (#ulink_064d9370-9cd3-5513-8894-c789fefbd9e5)

6 AUGUST 1939: High Wycombe Railway Station (#ulink_4d68136c-bbc2-5084-8482-bb17fe768745)

3 SEPTEMBER 1939: Blythe Cottage (#ulink_451141f3-1fe2-5c4f-88f7-e1d3142104ca)

23 SEPTEMBER 1939: Whichert House (#litres_trial_promo)

3 DECEMBER 1939: Whichert House (#litres_trial_promo)

13 DECEMBER 1939: Levant, Sussex (#litres_trial_promo)

CHRISTMAS DAY, 1939: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)