Where Earth Meets Sky

Book excerpt: Beautiful, dark-haired Lily was abandoned in a Birmingham slum as a tiny child. With few clues as to her identity, she endured a childhood of loneliness and loss. Now, at eighteen, she applies for a post as nanny with the family of a Captain Fairford, a soldier in Ambala in northern India, and his highly strung wife Susan. Lily is drawn into the emotional life of the Fairford family and adores her charge, two-year-old Cosmo. When, in 1907, Captain Fairford orders a new Daimler car, it is brought out by a young motor mechanic, Sam Ironside. Sam and Lily fall deeply in love, but it is only later that Lily learns that Sam is married and she feels utterly betrayed. When Cosmo is then sent back to Birmingham for school, Lily finds another post with a Dr McBride and his invalid wife in a beautiful Himalayan hill station. The place is idyllic, and Lily settles in for a quiet life. However, she is unprepared for the pain and misunderstandings that follow and force her to run from everything she has known . . . Where Earth Meets Sky by Annie Murray takes us from Edwardian England and the British Raj, through the darkness of the Great War to the glamour of Brooklands Race Track in the 1920s. Spanning two continents, it is a story of enduring friendships and two hearts which cannot be kept apart.