SOLVED. 20th century, fictional, war book. Multiple plots. One plot line is young single and unmarried pregnant woman leaves England for France during/at the beginning of WW2 to have her baby and becomes an informant/communicator.

[Sophie]

Clare FrancisNight SkyI would say this was a book for adults - possibly young adults but I'd side more with it being an adult fiction.

When I was in my teens (so about 20 years ago now), I repeatedly read a book which I grew really fond of. I fell into the age old trap of lending it to someone who never returned it and I have spent over a decade trying to find it again. I'm hoping one of you bright sparks can help me!

The plot of the novel as I remember it, goes like this!:

* The story is set slightly pre war (fairly sure it's 2nd world war rather than first) and a young girl lives in/close to Plymouth in the South West of England with her (rather hideous) mother. I think she is in nurse training at the time. She is half heartedly dating a naval officer and accidentally falls pregnant. When she tells him, he blocks her off and wants nothing more to do with her.

* She ends up going or being sent over to France in disgrace to stay with family or people connected to the family to have the baby. She has a young boy.

* Meanwhile there is a whole German SS plot line where there are senior members of the SS working secretly on machinery and weaponry in a hidden factory somewhere and I remember some being killed as they were suspected leakers of information. I'm sure Groening is a character in it, but I may have picked that up in things I have seen and read since.

* There is also a plot involving a spy/smuggling kind of character and I always remember him because he goes into bars and cafes in France and always orders a "pastis". I'm sure I remember him trading in all the goods it was hard to get a hold of or people couldn't afford like luxury items and foods.

* The original young lady then ends up working as a sort of informant (still in France with her son and the people she stays with) and is passing messages from France back across to England I think. Towards the end of the book, I think she's perilously close to being discovered and so a plan is hatched for her to flee back to England in a small sail boat with her son. I'm sure she's supposed to do the journey with someone else, who is capable of the sail, but this falls through or something happens and she ends up alone. As she sails back to England, she sails into a storm and I think her boat is destroyed as it crashes against rocks. As I remember it, she's washed up on the Isles of Scilly - I think she stays there for a short time and then I'm sure she makes it home.

Please God, let someone know what I'm banging on about because this is tortuous!

Thanks in advance if you can help me!!