Things were getting worse in London so my mum decided to send me away. It must have been hard for her but she kept saying it was for the best. They told us we were going to Devon but I was only nine and I thought it must be just outside London somewhere. My mum told me not to complain and that whatever happened I had to grin and bear it. Dad was away in the army and she just wanted me to be safe. We were put on the train with labels tied to our clothes and one of the grown-ups told me not to lose the label because if I did I’d never see my family again. I held onto that label for dear life, I can tell you, and when we reached the station at Neston the cardboard was all damp and the ink had started to run. I cried because I was scared that nobody would be able to read it and I’d be lost forever in all those green fields I’d seen out of the train window. I was from the East End of London and I’d never seen countryside before. It seemed so big and frightening with all those lonely farms and woods where terrible things probably happened.
