Captain Laurence Greene was gassed at Ypres. He takes ten years to die. With her fiancé, Joseph, lost in France, Effie Shaw spends a decade as Laurence's cook. They share a roof, a sweet tooth and a taste for pastoral romances. Propriety, however, prescribes that their sharing end there. It is a surprise to Effie, then, when Laurence bequeaths her a railway ticket, the deeds to a tea shop and a declaration of his unspoken love.
The terms of Laurence's will require that Effie must travel to Ypres and visit her fiancé's grave. As Laurence had always told it, Joseph met his end with a show of heroics. But, in carrying out Laurence's last requests, and following his wartime diary, Effie is to discover something shocking. Joseph wasn't quite as heroic as she was told – nor is his grave where it's supposed to be.
The stories of three soldiers connect through Laurence's diary. As Effie travels on, from Passchendaele to Paris, these men become linked together once again. A decade on from the Armistice, is the war really over at all? Effie is about to realise just how many echoes – and untidy ends – 1918 has left behind.
As seen in the Blackpool Gazette.
