A Long and Lonely Road

Rose McAllister is waiting for her husband Steve to come home. He is a seaman, often drunk and violent, but Rose does her best to cope and sees that her daughters, Daisy, 8 and Petal 4, suffer as little as possible. Steve, however, realizes that war is coming and tries to reform, but on his last night home her pawns the girls’ new dolls to go on a drinking binge. When war is declared Rose has a good job but agrees the children must be evacuated. Daisy and Petal are happy at first, but circumstances change and they are put in the care of a woman who hates all scousers and taunts them with the destruction of their city. They run away, arriving home on the worst night of the May Blitz. Rose is attending the birth of her friend’s baby and goes back to Bernard Terrace to find her home has received a direct hit, and is told that the children were last seen entering the house the previous evening. Devastated, she decides to join the WAAF, encouraged by an RAF pilot, Luke, whom she has befriended …