Promise

On the night of the raid on Coventry, the Thorpe family sheltered in the Anderson shelter: Mum, Dad, Florrie and little May. Jack, their son and brother, was not with them, having failed to return from Dunkirk. That night May was made to swear an oath to guard a secret. Its consequences would shape the lives of everyone who survived the war, and by the end May is the last of them.

Seventy years on, Daisy and Marcus, sixth formers at a school in Gloucestershire, receive an A Level assignment on the Coventry bombing of 1940. They visit May, who now lives in sheltered housing close to the school, and an unlikely friendship grows across the decades that separate them. Both teenagers are dealing with troubles of their own.

As they get to know May, the two young people find themselves drawn into the puzzling story of her missing brother. They are also pulled into a promise made long ago that still has effects in the present.