Danielle Byers

“All month the Luftwaffe had been attacking us, like pennies from a jar, so the fact they couldn’t hold off for just a few measly hours made me hate the Germans that little bit more.”
― Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse

“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

“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

“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