Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Bill Fletcher is Edie's father — an East-End dockman who signs on with the merchant navy and sails the Atlantic convoys through the war. Mostly he is an absence: a voice on a crackly trunk-call, a card from a far-off port, a danger Edie feels through the shipping news on the wireless and the long gaps between letters. He is the quiet, steady man who gave his daughter a key and told her she'd come home.