Emma Carroll > Quotes

“For the book was also about ambition. About wanting to be the biggest, the best, the most famous at any cost. It was about pushing the boundaries of discovery. Most of all, though, it was a warning: without love and kindness, we all become monsters.”
― Emma Carroll, Strange Star

“Nurse Spencer came back without tea. One look at her and I knew she had bad news.
‘Oh lord,’ she said, closing the curtain behind her. ‘Maybe you weren’t so lucky after all.’
I wanted to pull the covers up and hide, then she might go away and take her awful news with her. But I couldn’t bear not to know, either. ‘It’s not my brother? Or…’ I gulped. ‘My sister?’
‘It’s your mother. A bomb landed on the building where she was last night.’
The ringing sound was back in my ears; I wasn’t sure I’d heard her properly. ‘My mother?’
‘Yes, it was a direct hit. You mustn’t think that she suffered.’
She probably said this to every relative, every time, which I supposed was nice of her. The words, though, didn’t sink in.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Every Monday and Friday night, leaving us with awful suppers to reheat, our mum didn’t work late shifts at the printworks. She went to an office in Shoreditch. And from there, by radio, by note, by telephone and letters, she exchanged messages with Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson and Queenie and others like them on what she called ‘humanitarian war work’. She’d never met any of them in person.
‘I can’t tell you any more details. It’s secret work. How you know even this much is really quite beyond me,’ she admitted.
‘I worked most of it out myself,’ I told her. She might’ve hidden it from me all this time, but I wasn’t stupid. ‘Sounds like Sukie did too.’
‘Your sister spied on me,’ Mum replied bitterly. ‘She stole paperwork, listened in to private conversations. She was very foolish to get caught up in something she knew nothing about.’
‘She did know about it, though. What Hitler’s doing really got to her. She was desperate to do something about it. All that post from Devon? It wasn’t from Queenie. Those were letters from the lighthouse, written by Ephraim, who feels the same about the Jewish people as Sukie does.’
‘It was stupid, impulsive behaviour,’ Mum argued, ‘of the sort your sister’s very good at.’
Yet to me she had missed a vital point.
‘You know Sukie wanted to help you, don’t you? She saw how ill you’d got over Dad. By standing in for you on this job, she was making sure you’d get some rest, like the doctor said you should.’
‘I might’ve known you’d stick up for your sister,’ Mum remarked. ‘But it didn’t help me – it worried me sick!’
‘It did help thirty-two refugees, though,’ I reminded her.
‘She was lucky she didn’t get arrested straight away.’ Mum went on as if she hadn’t heard me. ‘When I found out that night what she’d done, I was all for going after her, hauling her back and locking her in her bedroom, till this frightful war was over if I had to. But it was too late by then. She was already halfway to France.’
‘You knew the night she disappeared?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘And admit that I do undercover work and Sukie was doing it too?’ Mum cried. ‘Good grief, Olive, it’s secret business. It was too dangerous to tell you. There’s a war on, remember!’
‘People always use that excuse,’ I muttered.
It stunned me that Mum had known all this time. But then, hadn’t there been signs? The looks in our kitchen between her and Gloria, the refusal to talk about Sukie, the bundling us off out of the way – to here, the very place Sukie might, with any luck, show up. It was a clever way of making sure we knew the moment she set foot on British soil again.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“First up was the newsreel. Every film show started like this, with five minutes of news from home and abroad. It was all very upbeat, with a proper English voice telling us everything would be all right, even if the film footage showed bombsites and battlefields. I watched eagerly, chin in hand, as the big white titles and the word ‘Pathé’ filled the screen.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“The lighthouse keeper’s dog took a sniff of Queenie’s shoes and growled. It was probably a good judge of character, I decided. Yet as my brain caught up with what was happening, I realised life had taken a sudden turn for the better. Putting down our suitcases, I gave Cliff’s arm an excited squeeze. We were going to live in the lighthouse!”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“This is why we’re at war with Hitler. We don’t hate the German people, we hate fascism. Wouldn’t it be a way of letting Hitler win if we all started behaving as he does?”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I can’t remember a specific time when the comments and the name-calling started, but one evening in November it all got much worse,’ she said. ‘My brother Tobias and me were doing our homework at the dining room table like we always did.’
‘You’ve got a brother?’
She hesitated before nodding. ‘Papa was working late at the clinic in a friend’s back room – it was against the law for Jews to work as doctors. Mama was making supper in the kitchen, and I remember her cursing because she’d just burned her hand on the griddle. Tobias and me couldn’t stop laughing because Mama never swore.’ The memory of it made her mouth twitch in an almost-smile.
Then someone banged on our front door. It was late – too late for social calling. Mama told us not to answer it. Everyone knew someone who’d had a knock on the door like that.’
‘Who was it?’
‘The police, usually. Sometimes Hitler’s soldiers. It was never for a good reason, and it never ended happily. We all dreaded it happening to us. So, Mama turned the lights out and put her hand over the dog’s nose.’ Esther, glancing sideways at me, explained: ‘We had a sausage dog called Gerta who barked at everything.
‘The knocking went on and they started shouting through the letter box, saying they’d burn the house down if we didn’t answer the door. Mama told us to hide under the table and went to speak to them. They wanted Papa. They said he’d been treating non-Jewish patients at the clinic and it had to stop. Mama told them he wasn’t here but they didn’t believe her and came in anyway. There were four of them in Nazi uniform, stomping through our house in their filthy great boots. Finding us hiding under the table, they decided to take Tobias as a substitute for Papa. ‘When your husband hands himself in, we’ll release the boy,’ was what they said.
‘It was cold outside – a freezing Austrian winter’s night – but they wouldn’t let Tobias fetch his coat. As soon as they laid hands on him, Mama started screaming. She let go of Gerta and grabbed Tobias – we both did – pulling on his arms, yelling that they couldn’t take him, that he’d done nothing wrong. Gerta was barking. I saw one of the men swing his boot at ther. She went flying across the room, hitting the mantelpiece. It was awful. She didn’t bark after that.’
It took a moment for the horror of what she was saying to sink in.
‘Don’t tell me any more if you don’t want to,’ I said gently.
She stared straight ahead like she hadn’t heard me. ‘They took my brother anyway. He was ten years old.
‘We ran into the street after them, and it was chaos – like the end of the world or something. The whole town was fully of Nazi uniforms. There were broken windows, burning houses, people sobbing in the gutter. The synagogue at the end of our street was on fire. I was terrified. So terrified I couldn’t move. But Mum kept running. Shouting and yelling and running after my brother. I didn’t see what happened but I heard the gunshot.’
She stopped. Rubbed her face in her hands. ‘Afterwards they gave it a very pretty name: Kristallnacht – meaning “the night of broken glass”. But it was the night I lost my mother and my brother. I was sent away soon after as part of the Kindertransport, though Papa never got used to losing us all at once. Nor did I. That’s why he came to find me. He always promised he’d try.’
Anything I might’ve said stayed stuck in my throat. There weren’t words for it, not really. So I put my arm through Esther’s and we sat, gazing out to sea, two old enemies who were, at last, friends. She was right – it was her story to tell. And I could think of plenty who might benefit from hearing it.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Beneath our race, our religion, we were all human beings. We all hurt in the same ways.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“But when, a long time later, Felix turned the final page, he knew there was more to this story than names. In it was a mother whose death broke her children's hearts. There were kind fathers, like Lizzie's, and ones like Mary's who were distant and cool. There were people who, time and time again, judged others for how they looked.”
― Emma Carroll, Strange Star

“I looked at her properly then, drinking in this person I thought I knew so well. Even the familiar bits – the chocolate brown eyes, the dark wavy hair – looked different somehow.
What surprised me most was the pride I had for my mum. These past months I’d seen her become a sad person who cried too much. Yet, even then, there were parts to her that were stronger than I’d ever imagined. Thinking over all she’d done, how Queenie and Ephraim and the others held her in such high regard, and how she’d inspired Sukie, I began to feel different too. The uneasiness that she wasn’t well was still there. Mixed in with it, though, was the belief that she’d recover. I supposed what I was feeling was hope.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Olive,’ Mum said, stroking my fringe. ‘I need you to listen to me, and I need you to be brave.’
Opening my eyes again, I swallowed nervously. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Your sister didn’t arrive at work today.’
Sukie was a typist for an insurance company in Clerkenwell. She said it was the dullest job ever.
‘Isn’t today Saturday, though?’ I asked.
‘She was due in to do overtime. No one’s seen her since she was with you and Cliff last night. She’s missing.’
‘Missing?’ I didn’t understand.
Mum nodded.
The nurse added rather unhelpfully: ‘We’ve had casualties from all over London. It’s been chaos. All you can do is keep hoping for the best.’
It was obvious what she meant. I glanced at Mum, who always took the opposite view in any argument. But she stayed silent. Her hands, though, were trembling.
‘Missing isn’t the same as dead,’ I pointed out.
Mum grimaced. ‘That’s true, and I’ve spoken to the War Office: Sukie’s name isn’t on their list of dead or injured but-’
‘So she’s alive, then. She must be. I saw her in the street talking to a man,’ I said. ‘When she realised I’d followed her she was really furious about it.’
Mum looked at me, at the nurse, at the bump on my head. ‘Darling, you’re concussed. Don’t get overexcited now.’
‘But you can’t think she’s dead.’ I insisted. ‘There’s no proof, is ther?’
‘Sometimes it’s difficult to identify someone after…’ Mum faltered.
I knew what she couldn’t say: sometimes if a body got blown apart there’d be nothing left to tie a name tag to. It was why we’d never buried Dad. Perhaps if there’d been a coffin and a headstone and a vicar saying nice things, it would’ve seemed more real.
This felt different, though. After a big air raid the telephones were often down, letters got delayed, roads blocked. It might be a day or two before we heard from Sukie, and worried though I was, I knew she could look after herself. I wondered if it was part of Mum being ill, this painting the world black when it was grey.
My head was hurting again so I lay back against the pillows. I was fed up with this stupid, horrid war. Eighteen months ago when it started, everyone said it’d be over before Christmas, but they were wrong. It was still going on, tearing great holes in people’s lives. We’d already lost Dad, and half the time these days it felt like Mum wasn’t quite here. And now Sukie – who knew where she was?
I didn’t realise I was crying again until Mum touched my cheek.
‘It’s not fair,’ I said weakly.
‘War isn’t fair, I’m afraid,’ Mum replied. ‘You only have to walk through this hospital to see we’re not the only ones suffering. Though that’s just the top of the iceberg, believe me. There’s plenty worse going on in Europe.’
I remembered Sukie mentioning this too. She’d got really upset when she told me about the awful things happening to people Hitler didn’t like. She was in the kitchen chopping onions at the time so I wasn’t aware she was crying properly.
‘What sort of awful things?’ I’d asked her.
‘Food shortages, people being driven from their homes.’ Sukie took a deep breath, as if the list was really long. ‘People being attacked for no reason or sent no one knows where – Jewish people in particular. They’re made to wear yellow stars so everyone knows they’re Jews, and then barred from shops and schools and even parts of the towns where they live. It’s heartbreaking to think we can’t do anything about it.’
People threatened by soldiers. People queuing for food with stars on their coats. It was what I’d seen on last night’s newsreel at the cinema. My murky brain could just about remember those dismal scenes, and it made me even more angry. How I hated this lousy war.
I didn’t know what I could do about it, a thirteen-year-old girl with a bump on her head. Yet thinking there might be something made me feel a tiny bit better.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I took a big breath, like I was standing on the edge of a wall trying to find the courage to jump.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I still didn’t understand everything. People, it seemed to me, were much harder to crack than codes. Yet it didn’t matter where we came from, our language, our nationality, or our religion. As long as we all looked to the light.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“After weeks of feeling fearful, she decided it was time to cheer up.”
― Emma Carroll, The Ghost Garden

“The Jenkins family, who took her in after the Kindertransport, gave her their surname. She didn’t expect to see any of her family again. This was supposed to be a fresh start for her, here in England. Her mother, God bless her, was already dead. Her father was in trouble with the authorities.’
‘For doing what?’ Though I had pretty much guessed the answer: he was Jewish.
‘It’s just so stupid,’ I said, drying the plate rather roughly. ‘How can you hate someone just because of how they live their life?’
Mrs. Henderson sighed. ‘People like to have something to hate – it makes life easier when things go wrong if there’s someone to blame. Think about what happened here today with that pilot, Olive.’
She meant how quickly the crowd turned on him. It was frightening how easily normal, pleasant people got whipped up into nastiness. The possibility that something similar had happened to Esther’s family disturbed me.
‘But it’s worse than that, isn’t it?’ I said, thinking ‘The German pilot was a fighter from the enemy side. Esther’s family were… well… just people.’
‘Yes, my dear,’ Mrs. Henderson sighed again, blowing damp strands of hair off her face. ‘Normal, educated, cultured people. It was all very well, the Kindertransport, but what good’s a child without its parents? You saw what it did to Esther.’
‘Well, I’m glad they’re all here,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you helped them.’
Mrs. Henderson looked sad. ‘But we can’t save everyone… our government needs to take some responsibility and do much, much more. We should be helping them flee Hitler, not turning them away. We’ve had to smuggle these good people in like criminals.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I was beginning to be rather in awe of Queenie. She had that quiet authority that made you respect her, even if she wasn’t overly friendly. Unlike Sukie, she didn’t need everyone to like her. In her old, baggy sweaters I don’t think she even cared. She simply did what she thought was right, and stuck to her guns. It was this, to me, that made her impressive.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Once the last plane had gone over, a stunned silence fell. It made the ringing in my ears even worse. Then all at once everyone was talking in the jokey, shrill way people do when they’ve been scared and are relieved it’s over.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“I only hoped that when Dad’s plane came down someone kind had found him, to hold his hand when he was hurting and tell him not to be scared. Better still if it’d been so quick he’d died before his plane hit the ground.
No, I wouldn’t keep quiet. I had a voice, and it was time to make some noise with it.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Cliff went to bed early that night. Knowing I’d not sleep I stayed by the stove trying to read, but my mind kept jumping in and out of the story. That word ‘erase’ really bothered me: as if you could just wipe out a person’s home and move them on somewhere else and expect life to pick up again as normal. Being evacuated had felt like that. You just had to get on with it and try to fit in. the Kindertransport, though, must’ve been so much worse because on top of everything else Esther had to learn a new language and new customs, which would have made the fitting in part doubly hard.
I shut my book with a sigh. I was trying to understand her, I really was. It was’t surprising she was angry – difficult, Mum would say. I wondered what Esther thought of me: was I annoying? Quiet?
Maybe.
Or was the uncomfortable truth that perhaps, from Esther’s viewpoint, it was me who was the angry, difficult one?
Mulling it over, I wasn’t really listening to Ephraim as he talked on the radio upstairs. But at some point I became aware that his voice was raised.
‘They were expected days ago, you know that. It was always going to be tough. With such a small window of time they’d have to be incredibly quick,’ he was saying. ‘No, I’ve not had any contact… no… not a word.’
I moved to the bottom of the stairs to listen properly.
‘The weather was set fair so that shouldn’t have been… She had the co-ordiantes… Yes, I know the whole north coast is German-occupied, that’s whny they had to act fast. And it’ll be dangerous landing a boat her without the light…’
He went silent. Somewhere in the crackle of the radio I detected a familiar woman’s voice – Queenie’s. It startled me for a moment, though it also made sense. My hunch from the other night had been right: whatever they were up to, they were in it together.
‘Patience, Ephraim,’ Queenie said. ‘We need to sit this out for a few more days.’
‘But it’ll only get harder, won’t it? Spratt’s got other plans for the lighthouse. He told me so this afternoon…’
‘Losing your nerve won’t help anyone,’ she insisted. ‘Look, it sounds like we need a meeting. I’ll contact the others. Come over as soon as you can.’
I only just managed to get back into my seat before Ephraim came rushing down the stairs.
‘I’m going out for an hour,’ he muttered, grabbing his oilskins from their hook.
‘Where?’ I tried to sound innocent.
‘Out,’ he repeated. The tension, still there in his voice, made me ever so slightly afraid. Whatever was going on involved a boat, and danger, and someone who’d been expected here but still hadn’t arrived.
Once Ephraim had disappeared, I shut my reading book. I really couldn’t concentrate anymore.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“This suitcase belonged to someone. And that someone had packed up their books and clothes and toothbrush, much like we had, and had left their home far behind. I wondered if they’d felt frightened, unsure of where they were going and what sort of welcome they’d receive when they got there. At least we’d arrived in one piece.
The more I looked, the more I was sure this luggage was from Queenie’s missing boat. I could feel it too, a sort of foreboding in the air, because if my instinct was right, then where were the passengers? Had their attempt to help people gone tragically wrong? And what about Sukie? The awfulness of what this washed-up suitcase implied almost overwhelmed me.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“You’re evacuating us, aren’t you?’ I said in surprise. ‘But you can’t. I mean… you need us here… we need to be here.’
That was always what Mum said. We needed to be together, especially after Dad went off to fight. When war was declared, all the schools round our way closed. Our classmates and our teacher Miss Higgins got evacuated to Kent and for a while I’d get postcards from my friends Maggie and Susan, who told me all I was missing – which wasn’t much by the sound of it.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“And until we found Sukie I was the big sister, the responsible one. That was pretty alarming too.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Now listen, darling,’ she said to me. ‘You’re to look after your brother, all right?’
I wasn’t sure I was capable of even looking after myself, but I nodded wretchedly. ‘I’ll try my best.’
‘You’ll be fine. You’ll be together.’ She forced a smile. It made me sadder to think we were leaving her on her own, but her job was here in London. She had to work to pay the bills, so we’d still have a nice home to come back to when these awful air raids were over.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“DO YOUR DUTY”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse: 'The Queen of historical fiction.' Guardian

“Beginning to worry, I told myself this was no different from any other raid – and they were happening almost every day now. Most of the action was down near the docks; on Fairfoot Road where we lived, they’d been more of an annoyance, forcing you out of bed in the middle of the night and into a freezing-cold air-raid shelter.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Then Jim the cabbage man said, ‘Who in God’s name is going to tell Ephraim?’
And everyone started talking again.
‘He won’t take kindly to it…’
‘Never known him live anywhere else, not since his family died…’
‘That was a terrible winter, that was. The churchyard was full to bursting.’
‘The lighthouse is his family these days…’
It made me realise how little I knew of Ephraim. Though I didn’t know how or when his family had died, I understood what it felt like to lose someone. Yet to lose all your family at once must be terrible, and sadness welled up in my throat. He had no one left; we had our mum, and even then it still hurt, knowing Dad would never be back. No wonder poor Ephraim never smiled.
Mr. Spratt clapped his hands for quiet. ‘I’ll be visiting Mr Pengilly directly to inform him of my plans.’
‘Good luck – you’ll need it,’ said Jim, shaking his head.
The crowd dispersed soon after that. Glad to be going home, we walked down the hill, falling back into an even gloomier silence.
Home.
I’d already started thinking of the lighthouse in that way. Poor Ephraim: it’d be a hundred times worse for him and Pixie. Nor could I believe Mr. Spratt could just get rid of a lighthouse or indeed how he’d do it.
Yet who’d have thought they’d evacuate all the zoo animals out of London or the famous paintings from the National Gallery? And what about us school children, sent from our families to the middle of nowhere? If you had a family: from what Queenie’d said, Esther didn’t even have that.
All sorts were happening because of this war, not to mention missing sisters and codes I couldn’t break. There was so much I still didn’t understand. Maybe it was possible to remove a lighthouse, though I still wasn’t sure how.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“A tray of dirty tea things sat forgotten about on the floor. There were more chairs than normal, all evidence of yesterday’s meeting. One teacup, I noticed, had lipstick on its rim, the same glossy red colour that Miss Carter wore. Ephraim had mentioned ‘the others’: it didn’t take much guessing to work out who they were. When it came to welcoming strangers to Budmouth Point, Miss Carter and Mrs. Henderson had experience.
First evacuees, now refugees. That was it, wasn’t it?
There were people in Europe, fleeing for their lives, who were escaping here, to Budmouth Point. These were the visitors Ephraim was expecting. The realisation made me dizzy.
It connected to Sukie didn’t it, because she’d cried trying to tell me how ‘heartbreaking’ it was not being able to help – yet in writing to Ephraim, maybe she’d found a way to. Perhaps their letters were actually full of plans of how they might get people away from the Nazis. It would certainly explain why Sukie wrote so much and so often. Bit by bit I could feel it coming together in my head.
That map with the foreign place names I’d found in her drawer at home – was this where the boat was coming from?
‘Are you all right?’ Queenie asked suddenly. Looking concerned, she offered me a chair.
‘I’m fine.’ I stayed standing.
‘No you’re not.’ Queenie pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a headache. ‘You’re a smart girl, Olive. I’d a feeling you’d guess what was going on. I didn’t think Ephraim could keep it from you for long.’
‘He told me about writing to Sukie, that’s all.’ I said, though it wasn’t strictly true. But I was unsure how much to say.
‘You’re learning that some things need to be secret.’ Queenie gave me a wry smile. ‘I trust you can keep this one?’
I hesitated. She hadn’t actually told me what the secret was, but I’d already petty much guessed. You’re expecting some people, from place that’s occupied by the Germans?’
‘Yes… from France.’ She sat back in her chair, raking her fingers through her hair. ‘We’re bringing them here for a few days, giving them false papers, then helping them on their way again.’
‘Where will they go?’
‘To countries that aren’t as strict as ours about Jewish refugees: America, Canada, Australia maybe.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Is what you’re doing against the law?’
‘Probably. If we keep a low profile, we might just get away with it.’ She sighed heavily. ‘They’ve got to get here first, though. It’s such a risky mission. They were smuggled out of Austria all the way to the French coast, and quite frankly they’ve been lucky to make it that far. We were expecting the boat ten days ago…’
I nodded, my mind whizzing. Day 9. The only part of Sukie’s notes I understood.
‘Do you know why Ephraim and my sister wrote to each other?’ I asked suddenly.
‘What? Oh, Gloria mentioned Sukie was looking for a penpal – it was a new “thing” apparently.’ She rolled her eyes rather dismissively. ‘Ephraim was so lonely, we both thought it might cheer him up. It certainly worked – he’s quite taken with your Sukie.’
‘There’s more to it than that,’ I ventured. ‘My sister’s involved in this mission, isn’t she?’
Queenie frowned. ‘Your sister? Why would she be?’
‘You don’t know what she’s like,’ I replied, for it was very clear now that Queenie’d never written to Sukie, nor probably ever met her. If she had she’d realise how much my sister hated the Nazis, how upset the news coming out of Europe made her, how headstrong and brave she was.
Doing something to try and help people threatened by Hitler was exactly the sort of thing my sister would want to be part of. I couldn’t understand why Queenie was so certain she wasn’t.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Perhaps she got the day wrong,’ I offered, though it sounded pretty feeble.
Mrs. Henderson shook her head. ‘It’s those clocks of hers – very romantic but terribly impractical.’
I didn’t know what Mrs. Henderson meant, but I was starting to realise my days of counting on grown-ups and big sisters were over. I was going to have to take charge myself.
I turned to Cliff. ‘Buck up, let’s grab our things, shall we? If Queenie won’t come to us, we’ll go to her.’
Which was all very well except we didn’t know where the post office was.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“Perhaps the garden had foreseen the future. Maybe it was telling her this: that difficult times are better faced together.”
― Emma Carroll, The Ghost Garden

“They were mostly from Austria, Mrs. Henderson told me, all Jewish but for one young woman – a ballerina – whose Romany parents had been put in prison by the Nazis. She was called Lyuba Zingari, which I thought a marvellous name, and was trying to get to America to become a famous dancer.
‘Hitler’s persecuting the Roma people too,’ Mrs. Henderson explained. ‘It’s dreadful. I often wonder where it will all end.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse