Part of the Furniture

Early in 1941, having just seen off at Euston Station the two young men whom she has loved for the best part of her seventeen years, Juno Marlowe is hurrying down a London street with her ill-fitting shoes in her hands. Aeroplanes thunder overhead; a battery of guns opens up. When a stick of bombs falls she cowers, then takes to her heels in flight. She is rescued from this nightmare by a gaunt stranger who offers her the protection of his house. Given this respite from the bleakness of having no home and no family to turn to, June encounters first tragedy, then a series of events that take her to a house in the West Country and the blosssoming of an English spring into which war only occasionally intrudes. Here she may find peace; here she will no longer be part of the furniture.