Tuesday 16 March 2010 photo 1/1
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Tuesday 16 March 2010 photo 1/1
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by honesty…or reality. because, in fact, i was too much of a coward to go and see my sister in june, 1940. i never made that journey to balham. so the scene in which i confess to them is imagined…invented. any of that could never have happened, because—robbie turner died of septicemia at bray dunes on june 1st 1940, the last day of the evacuation. and i was never able to put things right with my sister, cecilia, because she was killed on the 15th of october, 1940, by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains of balham tube station. so, my sister and robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for, and deserved. and which ever since, i’ve…ever since i’ve always felt i prevented. but, what sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? so in the book i wanted to give robbie and cecilia what they lost out on in life. i’d like to think this isn’t weakness or evasion. but a final act of kindness i gave them: their happiness.