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December 1939. Hettie Brown has recently retired from her work as cook at Great Plumstead Hall and is trying to settle into life at Rookery House when troubling news unsettles the security she expected retirement to bring.
Gloria Jessop, meanwhile, is living in the village as an evacuee and questioning whether she should remain there. With little of the bombing Londoners had feared, she misses her husband and children and begins to consider taking her family home. The approach of Christmas intensifies the loneliness felt by people separated from relatives, familiar homes and ordinary routines. Hettie and Gloria respond by organising practical help and a communal celebration, drawing the village together during the first winter of the war. Their plans reveal both the strains of evacuation and the importance of local support before the full scale of the conflict is understood.
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