The War Widows (46 page)

A chance encounter in a swimming pool in north-west Crete sparked off this story. Thank you Helena Charlton (wherever you are now) for sharing some of your history and giving me the idea. Thank you Manolis, Sofia and Marialena-the Tsompanakis family-for your wonderful hospitality and friendship.

Once again I’ve borrowed some of the landscapes from my home town, Bolton, but none of its people. I have used the premises of the Sabini ice cream parlour as I recall it as a child but my Santini family and their history is a figment of my imagination and their ice cream sodas could never have tasted as good as the ones I slurped through a straw all those years ago.

I am indebted to the following books for information:

A Detail on the Burma Front
by Winifred Beaumont (BBC Books)

Wings of an Angel
by Colin Barrett (Vanguard Books)

A Burmese Legacy
by Su Arnold (Coronet Books 1996)

Chindhe Women (The Women’s Auxiliary Service Burma)
by Sally and Lucy Jaffe

Crete: 1941 Eyewitnessed
(Efstathiadis Group)

Crete: The Battle of the Resistance
by Anthony Beevor (Penguin Books 1991)

Once again many thanks to Maxine Hitchcock, Sammia Rafique and the team at Avon for all their enthusiasm and help.

Leah Fleming was born in Lancashire of Scottish parents, and is married with four grown-up children and five grandchildren. She writes full-time from a haunted farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales and from the slopes of an olive grove in Crete.

Find out more about Leah at www.leahfleming.co.uk and visit www.AuthorTracker.co.uk for exclusive updates on Leah Fleming.

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This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

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Publishers
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London W6 8JB

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Copyright © Leah Fleming 2008

Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84756-013-1

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EPub Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334971

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