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It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond, in a boarding house on Woodland Road, Gipsy Hill, watches from her attic window, as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, she is working hard to keep her own little life ticking over: holding down a dull typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend Elena, and dodging her difficult father. She has good reason to keep her head down and stay out of trouble.

She knows what happens when she makes a nuisance of herself. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds – a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding.

Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he is following her. She no longer knows who to trust. She can’t even trust herself. She knows this; her family have told so her often enough. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte’s nerves become increasingly frayed, and soon her very freedom is under threat .