Baby Love

Just over a week until EAST END ANGEL is published in paperback. There have been online promotions and events, a number of book signings and a chance to speak to readers and enjoy their take on the Blitz. London’s Docklands, a prime target for the Luftwaffe, is the setting for my story. Co-incidentally, the Blitz is my grand-daughter’s history project at school. So we made a gasmask from a tea box and a long bootlace. It was fun to become an evacuee again. We copied the dress of the two small evacuees on the front illustration of my book and wrote out the identification tag. We were going to Cornwall, where a kindly family would take in the dirty-faced cockney urchins, whilst hoping that none of their own kids started to drop their “haitches” or developed nits. The tag line on the cover, under the title and beside a pic of a slender, gutsy looking 1940’s heroine says, “She’d do anything to protect the family she loves”. So why, asks my very perceptive eight-year-old, is she parting from her children? Good question. To give them a chance of survival, perhaps? To comply with the authorities? Or was it panic that swept up parents as the skies rained bombs? In this book, Pearl Jenkins fights tooth and nail to keep her baby. I just couldn’t evacuate the child - Pearl wouldn’t let me. When I told my grand-daughter this, I was given the thumbs-up. “I wouldn’t give my baby away,’ she said. ‘And I like Cornwall.’