A heartwarming, touching novel of life in Liverpool when the men return from war.

Church bells, silent for so long, rang out across the city. Ships in the Mersey blew their sirens, bus and car drivers hooted their horns, and lines of happy people danced the conga. It was VE day, a day for rejoicing, and it seemed the whole population of Liverpool had turned out to celebrate.

Eileen Gillmoss, a colourful, larger-than-life character with a smile forever lighting up her face and a joke never far from her lips, was the life and soul of the party. She danced and sang, her heart bursting with happiness. Today was the day she’d prayed for and dreamed about. After five long, lonely years, her prisoner-of-war husband Bill would be coming home, back to the open, loving arms of his wife and children.

But Eileen’s dreams turn to dust when the man who comes back from the war is a complete stranger to her. It isn’t only that Bill’s appearance has changed. It’s his remoteness, his flinching from her touch that Eileen can’t cope with, and she has to summon up all her strength and humour to see her through the day.

Eileen, whom everyone turns to for help and who is always there to lend a shoulder to cry on, is now the one in need. But who can she turn to? No one can give her what she craves most... her old husband back. She needs to feel Bill’s arms holding her close, his kisses on her lips. She wants him back where he belongs, as the man of the house. Finally, the day comes when she can take no more. Her strength sapped and her sense of humour gone, ‘You’re just like a bloody lodger,’ Eileen cries. ‘I don’t want a lodger, I want a man!’...

(ISBN: 0 7472 4660 2, Paperback £6.99)