The Last Boat Home: A BRAND NEW emotional historical story of love and loss from Rachel Sweasey for 2024

By Rachel Sweasey

An epic story of love, loss and second chances, The Last Boat Home will captivate readers of Fiona Valpy, Lorna Cook and Hazel Gaynor.

1940: When Daisy, a paintress at the local pottery, looks out across Poole Harbour, waiting for the ‘little ships’ to bring the retreating soldiers home from Dunkirk, she prays her husband will be among them. But Alfie is declared missing, presumed dead, and Daisy must learn to live as a widow. Then a chance encounter with a French soldier throws Daisy’s life even further off course, with heartbreaking consequences that will span generations.

1996: Decades later, Felicity is just holding herself together after the sudden loss of her husband. Needing escape, she travels to a small seaside town in the South of France and is surprised to find a piece of home in the window of a small shop. How did a jug from her home-town’s pottery find its way to the Cote d’Azur? Seeking answers, she opens the door to the shop, and on the possibility of finding happiness after all hope seemed lost…

Boldwood Books are proud to support the RNLI and have pledged to donate to the RNLI based on sales of The Last Boat Home to support the work they do saving lives at sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boldwood Books
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781835330951

Book preview

PROLOGUE

She stood on the clifftop, hands thrust deep into her raincoat pockets, smelling the airborne sea salt and feeling the wind gently tugging her hair back from her face. All along the edge of the cliff and in the field beside it, the breeze toyed with the tiny pink, yellow, and purple flowers, and the purple grasses that grew there. She looked out at the rolling, grey-green waters of the Channel and her heart squeezed tight in memory of the one she’d left behind, on the other side. She sent him a fresh heart-arrow, a sensory hug, a prayer of sorts, though she knew he would not hear her. He would never hear her, not from this distance across time, space, and oceans of separation.

She stepped daringly close to the edge and looked down the limestone cliff face into the turquoise waters below, where white, foamy waves smashed into the rocks unrelentingly. The jagged stacks of Old Harry Rocks were tantalisingly near but impossible to reach. The irony, she thought, was a tragedy in itself – how she came here to feel close to him and ended up noticing all the points of separation.

Separation. Togetherness. Relationship. Loneliness.

She wondered which one she would choose. Her heart quickened and she was buoyed by the knowledge that it really was her choice. Nobody else could tell her what to do. She lifted her head and looked out further into the bay, to the Isle of Wight in the east and then south, over the Channel towards France where so much of her heart lived now – across the waters that lay between them.

And she knew then, at that moment, what she would choose. Love.

1

POOLE, DORSET, JANUARY 1939

Daisy steadied the jug in her left hand, holding it by the rim with the barest touch of her fingertips as she tilted it back, glancing with an imperceptibly quick movement of her eyes towards the artist’s model on the table beside her. She changed brushes and with barely a glance down at her familiar palette, loaded the new brush with pale-blue paint and added colour to the jug in two indistinctly rounded shapes, one larger than the other. She rinsed the brush and added a darker blue then painted in the curves that would become feathers on her bluebird, and a small, dangling crop, at the bird’s throat, just a little below the space where she would soon add the beak and eye. She finished it with great swirling tail feathers and an outline to the crest.

Daisy was never aware that her tongue was a brush painting her lips as she created her pieces. In the fraction of a heartbeat while changing brushes to one already loaded with yellow paint, she rubbed one eyebrow with the back of her hand. The movement dislodged her old paint-smeared headscarf, enough to tell her she’d need to adjust it at tea-break time. The bold yellow circle she painted on the bird’s chest looked like a bright little sun, and while she had the yellow paint to hand, Daisy added the yellow rim around the very top of the jug, then turned it around to paint a little yellow bird beside a mass of wildly bright yellow flowers on the other side.

She finished the pattern with purple and green flowers, and some purple and green framing rims around the jug just at the top of the handle. She looked back at Truda Carter’s model and again at her own work, created in a matter of minutes. Daisy took the jug by the handle and turned it upside down, adding the initials ‘LE’ for the cockerel design and her personal mark to indicate that she’d painted it beside the imprinted Poole Pottery stamp. She placed the finished bluebird jug on the drying trolley beside her, picked up the next plain white pottery jug and began again as the wireless played the familiar tune that heralded the latest BBC news.

‘Hitler has declared the Polish city of Danzig to be German, and claims that under his leadership, it will again be part of Germany.’

Daisy sighed deeply and looked intently into the bright colours of her painter’s palette. The dark clouds billowing over Europe were beginning to threaten her sunny life in Poole. But it couldn’t come to all-out war. Not again. The government would see to that – and soon enough. She was sure of it. She turned the jug onto its side and started to splash the colour and life of the bright blue and yellow design all over again.

Alfie pulled his winter coat more tightly around his chest, and adjusted his scarf as the freezing January wind bit at his throat, inside and out. He was glad of the collar and tie that added an extra layer of padding against the chill, always more keen beside the water than anywhere else. He clipped along Poole Quay, having walked down the High Street from the train station. His father wanted to meet him at the pottery for morning coffee, and there’d been something more than a casual chat suggested in Mr Carter’s tone at breakfast that morning.

‘There are one or two business matters it would be good to go over with you, son, at the office,’ he’d said over the top of the newspaper, casting Alfie a meaningful glance out of sight of his mother as she cleared away the toast plates and broken eggshells.

Alfie pushed open the door to Poole Pottery and was blasted with welcome warmth from the heated reception area.

‘Mr Carter, sir, how nice to see you.’ The receptionist smiled from underneath her pretty, dark curls.

‘Morning, Lily. Is my father upstairs? He asked me to drop in.’

Mr Carter senior lifted an eyebrow in recognition of his son as the receptionist showed him in and then he asked Lily to bring them a tray of coffee. He wasted no time on pleasantries.

‘Alfie, I’d never mention this in front of your mother as the idea would terrify her. She lost both her brothers in the Great War, as you know, and all this talk on the wireless and in the newspaper is not good for her nerves. But I believe she is right to be worried. War is coming to us, son. I believe the world will be a very different place by the end of this year.’ He sighed deeply and studied Alfie’s face. There was a polite tap on the door before Lily carried in the coffee tray and set it down on the desk. Alfie’s eyes shone as he thanked her, slight dimples forming in his cheeks. He waited until he heard the door click before he responded.

‘It’s a frightful idea, but you’re probably right, Father. It’s all the boys can talk of if I’m honest. And some of them are glad of the chance of a job in the army. I’ll be needed here, of course, but if it came to it, I’d go, naturally.’

Mr Carter shook his head sadly and took a sip of coffee, placing the delicate china cup back into its saucer before he continued.

‘That’s the point I’m coming to, Alfie – the difference this war might make to us here at the pottery. I’ve had a letter this week from the government.’ He picked up an official-looking letter from beside him on the desk, scanning it for the phrase he sought. ‘We are instructed to consider winding down all areas of production that might not be deemed useful for the good of the country, in the event of war. Our flourishing decorative range will have to go – for now. I’m sure once this all blows over…’ He waved his hand dismissively rather than finish his thought. The idea that this all might not blow over was too horrific to voice.

‘But what about our workers? What will they do? They all depend on their jobs here.’

‘This is exactly the point, my boy. They’ll be needed elsewhere. It’s very likely the army will need more volunteers and, presumably, there will be other work for the women too. And we will be required to work on the more functional aspects of our trade – tiles, pipes and so forth. Perhaps the plain tableware will stay in production. Who knows what else the government might decide they need from a pottery?’

Alfie struggled to take in the idea. He knew everything was changing, of course, but somehow, his future at his father’s flourishing pottery had always seemed rock solid – the one thing he would always be able to depend upon.

‘How many workers do you think we will lose?’ he asked, turning his thoughts to practical matters.

‘Let’s go for a little stroll around the floor, shall we?’ Mr Carter suggested, standing up and walking out from behind his desk. ‘It’s easier to think about people and their skills when you can see them at work.’

Daisy. He’d spotted her last year on a similar walk through the pottery floor with his dad one day, but had not thought of her again until this moment. As they took the tour of the floor now, father and son walked past lines of women, the ‘paintresses’, all sitting with paintbrushes in hand, their hair wrapped up in silky scarves. Alfie caught sight of her face screwed up in concentration, tongue out to one side. He chuckled at her funny expression, but his smile froze as he followed her hand while it guided the paintbrush around the curve of the jug. And then her perfectly pointed pink tongue copied the action and followed the curve of her lips as if it was painting them scarlet with its deliciously wet tip. He watched her, breathless, until he felt he knew those lips, that tongue, as intimately as his own. Then she snapped her head up as sharply as if he’d called her name and she locked him into paralysis with her piercing eyes. They seared right through to his soul and, damn it, he loved the way that made him feel like jelly.

Alfred knew he was her senior in age, a little, and her superior in rank, too, if it came to that, but in that moment, he became a little boy at the feet of a goddess; here was a woman who could master him in any way she desired. And he saw too, by the way her eyes burned and sparkled, that she knew it. Mr Carter senior broke the spell.

‘Ah, Daisy, have you met my son? Alfred, this is Daisy Groves, one of my most gifted paintresses. A very talented girl is our Daisy. Her father is the coxswain of the lifeboat, you know.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Carter,’ she responded with the expected deference.

‘No, please call me Alfred, or Alfie even,’ and he instantly regretted this drop in formality when he felt his father’s unspoken reprimand in just the slight tilt of one eyebrow. If these staff were going to have to leave the pottery because of what Mr Hitler was doing in Poland, and because the government said so… well, it wouldn’t do to start getting friendly now. But, hell, she was lovely. Her dark hair was wrapped up in a headscarf but her neck was pale and slender and she had an air of, not quite fragility… He couldn’t put his finger on it. Delicacy, perhaps, like fine porcelain or bone china. She was elegant and fine, and rare.

Alfie tore himself away and followed his father on the walk around the pottery. There were dozens of skilled workers here whose artistry would not be required in a war effort. He hated to think of the waste. At the foot of the stairs back up to the office, he glanced back to where Daisy sat working. What if the next time he came here, she’d already been dismissed? He had to make sure he could see her again.

In the weeks after he’d laid eyes on Daisy Groves again, Alfie made several excuses to walk through the paintresses’ floor of the pottery. He quickly learnt the pattern of her day, then found a way to be passing the front door as she clocked off one Thursday evening.

‘Hello, Daisy.’ He smiled brightly.

‘Alfie, how lovely to see you!’ she replied, her feigned surprise hemmed with delight.

‘Are you just finishing now? I wonder, could I walk you to your bus, Daisy?’

Daisy didn’t catch a bus; Alfie walked her all the way home. He rattled out his rehearsed compliments and jokes along the way and by the time they reached her front door, he felt bolstered enough by her laughs to ask the big question.

‘Daisy, would you like…? I mean, can I take you out tomorrow night? There’s a band playing at the Pavilion in Bournemouth. Do you like to dance?’

Alfie almost skipped his way home after she’d closed the door that night. She had answered with a delighted ‘yes, please’, so full of innocence and breathless excitement that he had felt like a prince.

The next twenty-four hours took weeks to pass, and he only survived the wait by making several passes of the pottery floor so he could smile as he watched Daisy at work. He worked beside his father almost every day of the week now. Together, they made various plans for closing down the artistic side of the work, but so far, no action had been taken. And though he hated himself for his bias against the other workers, Alfie was determined that Daisy would be the last to go.

By Easter, Alfie was well known to Daisy’s parents, the lifeboat coxswain Mr Groves and his wife. He often went inside to sit with the family for a while in the evenings after walking her home. And it was there in that front room, with the cosy fire crackling and the wireless playing, that the war came into their lives tangibly and helped him make the best decision of his life. As Alfie drank his cocoa and watched the way the fire’s flames reflected in the pink of Daisy’s warming cheeks, Mrs Groves nudged her husband and cleared her throat. Alfie saw the old seaman frown back at her, oblivious to whatever her secret meaning had been.

‘Daisy love, and Rose,’ she said, looking to Daisy’s identical twin, who sat on the floor with her feet curled under her. ‘And you too, Alfie, as you’re so much a part of things here now, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you all,’ Mrs Groves began. Daisy and Alfie instinctively looked to each other as she continued.

‘Daisy, I’d like you and Rose to share a room together if you can manage it. I think I’ll be needing one of the bedrooms soon.’ She let the idea mingle in the air with the aroma of toast and the sounds of the fire crackling and spitting.

‘It’s the kiddies, you see, all them from London and Southampton,’ their mother continued a few moments later. ‘They’re wanting to send them down here soon to keep them safe in case it does all come to war. Those big cities will be so dangerous for them, so they want families with a room spare to take them in. And we’ve got a room spare, haven’t we, if you girls will share?’ It only took a moment of eye contact for Daisy and Rose to reach a conclusion without saying a word.

‘Of course we can, Mum, if it’s needed. When are they coming?’ asked Daisy.

‘Oh, we don’t know yet, love. They’ve been talking about it out at Dorchester, saying they can take four thousand of the little ones into the villages and farms around there, and I heard they’ll be wanting rooms here in Poole too. I just want to be ready. It might be months away yet – and we can always hope it never happens. Of course,’ she added with a definite glint in her eye, ‘there’s always the chance one of you two girls might not need a room here before too long, hey?’

Mr Groves chortled, and Rose smiled meaningfully in her twin’s direction. Alfie watched Daisy blush and try to hide a grin and it was there in that moment that he decided Daisy would never need to share a room with her sister. He could help the war effort on that front.

At the end of the evening, Daisy walked him out to the front gate to say goodbye. The spring evenings were growing longer and the daffodils and bluebells were all out in the garden though the air was still chill enough to need a fire at night. The sun had set an hour earlier but there was still a little birdsong on the breeze as the birds settled their families into the nests for the night. Alfie turned to face Daisy and reached down to kiss her, tenderly brushing the hair from her eyes as he did so. Every time their lips touched, it sent sparks through his soul and he felt his entire body burn now with the idea of being allowed to spend the whole night with her, every night. He held her tighter and thrilled as she reached up to kiss him back with more passion than he’d expected.

‘I don’t like all this talk of war, and evacuated children, Alfie,’ she whispered as she finally pulled away. ‘I just want to be here with you.’ Daisy sighed.

He ran his hands down her back and felt the way she curved her body towards him. Daisy wanted Alfie, and Alfie wanted Daisy – more than anything. He looked out to the night sky and wondered what might be coming for them out of the darkness. Was he right to be thinking of himself and Daisy at a time like this? But what if war did come, and separated them, and he never got to know the bliss of being with Daisy as he dreamed?

‘Daisy?’ he began.

She looked up into his face expectantly.

‘We don’t know what’s coming. And we can’t know what everything will be like just a year from now. But I know one thing.’ He took a deep breath and imagined she would be able to hear his heart that thumped in his chest. He cupped her face gently in his hands. ‘Daisy Groves, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?’

2

POOLE, JULY 1995

Felicity James huffed out a sigh and then perched atop a bollard in the car park of the library. She watched the distant exit of the huge roundabout, which should be spitting out her car. Any. Minute. Now. She had not been surprised when her husband didn’t turn up to collect her from work at 5.30 p.m., as promised. Not in the least bit surprised. Bloody annoyed, as always, but a decade of marriage to Peter meant that Felicity now lived with a constant expectation that he’d be late, or just not turn up at all. If he had walked into the library where she worked on the dot of 5.30 p.m., ready to take her home as planned, she would probably have fainted from the shock. In fact, she’d still been cruising the stacks and adjusting a few misbehaving books back into their correct and proper places when she realised it was ten to six already – time to go and wait outside and she’d probably get to the street just as he screamed around the roundabout, shouting his apologies and excuses for keeping her waiting so long.

Felicity glanced at her watch again: 6.04 p.m. Time to make some phone calls. This wasn’t just the usual running-a-little-late that was his norm.

She’d taken to giving him fake start times for events in the hopes they might arrive somewhere near on time. She smiled as she remembered June’s shocked face last Saturday night as they’d arrived for dinner at seven o’clock: exactly the time June had invited them. The two women had shared one of those momentary silent conversations that, without a single syllable being uttered and only a few face muscles employed, ended with the unspoken phrase: I’ll tell you all about this later, and my, how we’ll laugh!

‘What time do they want us there, tonight, love?’ Peter had called from under the bonnet of the Cortina that afternoon.

‘June said half past six. She’s got a roast in the oven.’ Felicity knew he understood how finely tuned the last few minutes of serving a roast had to be from the countless roasts they had cooked together; she would stir the gravy in between laying out dishes, draining the vegetable water into the gravy, taking the roast potatoes out of the oven, while he was carving the meat. It all came together like different parts of an orchestra playing the final bars of a symphony and any minutes wasted meant lumpy gravy, or cold meat. Peter knew full well that if June was cooking them a roast, they had to be on time.

‘Righto, should be done by then,’ he’d called back.

He’d rushed into the house at 6.25 p.m., opening the back door by leaning on the handle with one elbow and holding up his greasy hands like a surgeon keeping his freshly gloved hands germ-free for theatre. But this signal was code, asking Felicity to open the narrow cupboard beside the kitchen sink – full of his bits and bobs – take out the jar of Swarfega and unscrew the lid for him. He dipped three chunky fingers into the jar, slathered his expansive hands and forearms with the green slime, slicking it all over and round his hands, between his fingers, the backs and palms, and then each finger and thumb individually, massaging the gloop in until all the grease was released. Then he turned on the tap and, stalling to wipe a dewdrop off his nose with the arm of his stained old brown boiler suit, rinsed his hands until all the grease was washed away, leaving only the permanent dark lines that mapped his fingerprints. Six thirty.

‘We’ll be late, love,’ he called to Felicity as if it should come as a surprise. ‘I’ll just have a quick rinse in the shower, and we’ll be off.’

He had raced through the shower and thrown on his clothes, never even questioning if Felicity was ready to leave as he ran for the car, grabbing the keys on the way. She was right beside him as always. And they’d made it to dinner, smack on time at seven o’clock.

Felicity smiled as she remembered the way that she and June had laughed that night. The boys had gone out to the kitchen to get the washing up done while June and Felicity relaxed in the lounge with another glass of wine together.

‘Brilliant, Flis, absolutely brilliant! And he didn’t catch on?’

‘Not yet. I’ll just keep it up as long as I can. Maybe I’ll have to tell everyone this is the plan, so he doesn’t suspect anything.’

‘I think everybody who knows Pete would be totally on board helping you with this one. About bloody time!’ They’d laughed as the door swung open and their husbands came back in carrying a tray of tea mugs and a plate of brownies between them.

‘What’s about bloody time?’ asked Mark.

‘Time you two came in, and brought us that tea!’

Felicity looked at her watch again: 6.09 p.m. No, this was not the normal kind of late. This was the ‘something really big came up, love’ kind of late. She realised for the first time that evening that maybe this wasn’t his fault. Perhaps he was on a lifeboat shout. Normally, it didn’t affect her; he’d just take himself straight to the boathouse on his motorbike. But today, he’d had to take the car so he could carry all his diving gear down to the quay. It wasn’t a planned dive, being a Thursday when he should have been working a normal day at the welding workshop on the industrial estate. He’d been asked by a mate to make up a buddy pair for some out-of-town pleasure divers, and as a keen sport diver, he couldn’t resist the chance of an extra dive, so he’d taken the morning off.

They always went down in pairs and one guy had pulled out at the last minute. They were paying for everything; all he had to do was go along for the ride. He’d be back at work just after lunch. He’d woken her early that morning with a kiss on her forehead, which had only just reached into her dreams, and then she had felt another, fuller kiss on her lips that brought her almost completely awake.

‘I’m off, sleepyhead. I’ll pick you up from work tonight.’

Except he hadn’t. And now she needed to find out where the heck he was, and exactly how she was supposed to get home without a car if he wasn’t coming at all.

She went back into the library, unlocking the door now it was past closing hours, though some of the staff were still working. She sat down at the loans desk, picked up the phone and first dialled the Poole RNLI boathouse, a number she knew by heart. Steve answered, which was a good sign. If Steve was there then there wasn’t an emergency shout, and Pete must at least be on land somewhere.

‘Hi Steve, it’s Felicity James. Just wanted to check if Pete is out on a shout right now?’

There was a pause that made her feel guilty. They must be busy. Something was going on and she was blocking the lines and taking up time.

‘No, Flis, he’s not. He’s not here.’ Steve’s voice sounded distant. Strained.

‘Okay, no worries. Silly sod’s gone missing again. I’ll find him!’ She put the phone down and pulled the little black phone book out of her handbag, wondering exactly where to look next. Maybe Dave, the boat owner from this morning’s dive? But if there was a crowd of crew at the boathouse, maybe he was busy there with them. Dave was a crew member, too. She called home; the phone rang out. She started piecing together the way Pete’s day should have gone. Did he make it back to work or get distracted somewhere along the way? She rang the workshop number.

‘Hi Ray, this is Felicity. Is Pete there?’

‘No… no, he’s not.’ Again, that same, strained voice reminding her how much she must be annoying all these busy people.

‘Did he get back after lunch, like he promised?’

No. They hadn’t seen him or heard from him all day.

Felicity put the phone down and frowned. She started again from the beginning. He left home at 6 a.m., went diving, and didn’t make it back to work afterwards as planned. Did the boat even come back yet? Maybe there was a problem with the dive boat. That might explain why some of the crew were gathering at the lifeboat house. It wasn’t an official shout yet, perhaps, but maybe Dave was having engine troubles and the crew had all heard and met up on the quay in case he was going to need a tow. Most of them listened to the marine radio in their workshops, so they always had an idea of what was taking place in the harbour or out on the bay. There was nothing like the call of one of their own to rouse them all to action.

She thought about ringing the lifeboat house again, but didn’t want to be that wife, the finickity one always blocking the phone line and being a pain in the neck. She made her decision, gathered up her bag and set off again. She’d have to walk down to the quay to see if Dave’s boat was back in Fisherman’s Dock.

Poole High Street on a Thursday evening was a completely different version of its daytime self. The usually bustling shops were closed and shuttered. The busy little fruit market – with its day-long resounding holler from the fruit man of, ‘Bananas, three pound a pound!’ – was no more than a silent, locked roller door in a nameless wall.

As daytime drew to a close, the pubs and the chic new wine bars were starting to warm up. The Bistro had pulled out its continental canopy, and office workers were beginning to gather, freed from their working-day prisons and flocking to the watering hole to enjoy the warmth of the long summer evening ahead. This weather, still and calm, almost balmy, was made for sitting outside on a