The Girl From World’s End. Leah Fleming

      

       LEAH FLEMING

       The Girl From World’s End

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

       AVON

      A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

      Copyright © Leah Fleming 2007

      Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9781847560063

      Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334957

      Version: 2018-06-19

       Dedication

       In memory of Kathleen, who loved these hills.

       Epigraph

      …grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not be moved…

      Arthur Quiller-Couch

      Armistice Day Sermon, November 1927

      Contents

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Part One A Change of Sky

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Part Two Darkening Skies

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Part Three The Snow House

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Author’s Notes

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

Part One A Change of Sky

       1

       West Riding of Yorkshire, 1926

      A girl of about eight sat swinging her legs to and fro to keep them from going numb, watching the sky growing dark above. The weak December sun dipped behind the high moor and soon the cobbled streets would be crusted with frost. When was Father going to come out of the Green Man and take her home?