This book is a sequel to The Telegram (Pipi Press, 2019) – but you can also read it on its own. It is set in the same town and contains many of the same characters, as well as lots of new ones.
January 1920 heralds the start of a new decade, promising fresh opportunities for girls like Tilly and the friends she makes at her new secondary school. Tilly dreams of doing something remarkable, but those dreams seem impossible to reach, outweighed by all the things that girls can’t or aren’t supposed to do. At the same time, she feels she’ll never live up to the achievements of her sister Beaty, who was the town’s first telegram girl during the last years of World War One, the influenza epidemic and the Armistice.
The war is over now, but its shadow still darkens the town. Returned servicemen struggle to fit back into their old lives. Some have shell shock while others are crippled or blinded. Families have lost loved ones. Young men like Daniel and Caleb Murphy have come back battle-scarred, missing their mates, often unwell or suffering from shell shock and struggling to fit in to everyday life.
But the year has some things in store for Tilly that she could never have foreseen. From the moment that Matron stalks across the lawn of the soldiers’ convalescent home at the Red Cross garden party and tells her, “We could do with some help from young gels like you,” Tilly’s life is about to change.
The months that follow throw unexpected challenges in her way, and propel her into a series of events that are unexpected, happy, sad, puzzling, thrilling, exciting and sometimes all of those things at once.
