The Fourth Day of Christmas...Anne Bennett

On the fourth day of Christmas Anne Bennett adds her ornament to the RNA Tree...

This is why the boots mean so much to me.

"I'm sorry, Mr Bennett, but you have lung cancer." the surgeon said.  It was September 2010 and my husband. Denis had just recovered from a very virulent strain of double pneumonia that had badly scarred his lungs and the surgeon's words shocked us both  The good news, if there is any good news that can come for cancer diagnosis, was that the tumour  was localised and not in the blood stream.  Surgery to remove it  was the only option, but Denis's lungs were so scarred the surgeon didn't know whether he would either not survive the operation, or die shortly afterwards.  However he decided to go for it and so in late September he was in the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital and I was in the Robert Owen House  in the hospital grounds. 

He pulled through and though the cancer was gone so were two lobes of his right lung, for the tumour was blocking the airways to both, and he was advised to have chemotherapy in case any stray cell had escaped.   It was as we came down the stairs in December after his first bout of chemo lasting eight hours that I saw the two hand knitted boots hanging from the tree the 'Friends of the Hospital' had put up.  I don't know why those boots affected me so much but they did.  We both knew ahead of us was four months of harrowing chemo  and to me those boots symbolized hope and the belief that life was worth fighting for and that year and every year those boots will hang on my tree to remind us that that time that is now behind us and we must look ahead.

Anne's next book is out on the 17th of January 2013...

Their love crossed the class divide, but will it survive the ravages of war?

When Lucy’s father dies and her family is plunged into poverty, she is forced to take a job in service as a housemaid at Windthorpe House, home to the aristocratic Hetherington’s, who lost three of their four sons in the Great War.
When their only remaining son, Clive, returns home from university, he and Lucy strike up an immediate bond, which only deepens as Lucy becomes indispensable to the family. Clive however, much to his family’s consternation, decides to volunteer to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, though he returns injured and full of rage at the hated regime.
As Lucy tends his wounds, the two fall in love and Clive is determined that the class difference won’t keep them apart. But Hitler’s troops are gathering and fate has something very different in store for both of them…