Spilt Milk (28 page)

I am indebted to so many people who have encouraged and helped me throughout the writing of this book. To all my family and friends – thank you.

Special thanks also to my agent, Rachel Calder, and my editor, Juliet Annan, for their trust and expertise. Gillian Hamer, for being on the journey with me; Lucy Floyd, for her heart-warming kindness; Emma Bird-Newton, Caroline Pretty, JJ Marsh, Catriona Troth and Chris Curran; David Barnett, for books, tea and the loan of his cottage in France; Kit Habianic, for her invaluable support; and Guy and our wonderful girls, for their love and patience.

In war we sometimes lose ourselves …

It is 1946 and Silvana and eight-year-old Aurek board a ship that will take them from Poland to England. Silvana has not seen her husband Janusz in six years, but, they are assured, he has made them a home in Ipswich.

However, after living wild in the forests for years, carrying a terrible secret, all Silvana knows is that she and Aurek are survivors. Everything else is lost. While Janusz, a Polish soldier who has criss-crossed Europe during the war, hopes his family will help put his own dark past behind him.

But the war and the years apart will always haunt each of them unless they together confront what they were compelled to do to survive.

‘So convincing, completely gripping, admirable’
Daily Mail

‘A powerful debut set in the aftermath of the second world war: a moving account of the day-to-day struggle for survival’
Sunday Times

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Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
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First published 2014

Copyright © Amanda Hodgkinson, 2014

Cover: Front image © Arcangel Images

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

ISBN: 978-0-141-96499-7