Danielle Byers

“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

“Tonight’s news switched from RAF men to a city somewhere abroad – I didn’t catch where. The footage showed hungry-looking people queuing for food, flanked either side by soldiers. There was snow on the ground. The people in line wore star-shaped badges on their coats.
Watching, I began to feel uncomfortable instead of proud. The Pathé news voice – jolly and brisk – jarred with what I was seeing. These people weren’t just hungry but scared. I could tell by their faces how desperate they were, and it made me horribly guilty for the fuss we’d made about our supper.”
― 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

“Sukie hadn’t mentioned going away, nor had she told us about a boyfriend. Perhaps she’d gone somewhere to be romantic with him, though I couldn’t think where. It was winter still, for starters, and people didn’t go on holiday these days, not with the war on. Yet it gave me hope thinking that’s what she’d done, because holidays didn’t last forever: people eventually had to come home.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse