‘As I walk ever more falteringly through the hallways, echoes of my life –mundane and strange, joyful and dreadful – are like shadows, always there, following my footsteps. Now that he is gone, I am determined to make a new start. No more guilt and heart-searching. No more ‘what-ifs’. I need to make the most of the few more years that may be granted me
Sixty years ago, in the darkest days of the Second World War, Lily Verner made a terrible mistake that, she believed, led to tragic consequences. Now recently widowed, Lily decides to pack up the house she has lived in for 80 years. As she does so, long-buried memories start to emerge: of how she reluctantly became a silk weaver, of her passionate but forbidden affair with a Jewish refugee, of the woman who loved her, and how she found herself in charge of producing vital wartime supplies of parachute silk. Now in failing health, she is forced to confront the events that have haunted her all these years.
The Last Telegram was published in paperback and e-book by HarperCollins UK in September 2012, by Sourcebooks in the United States and in German translation by Random House.
Liz Trenow 