Born in 1911, Kathleen fights illness and poverty to begin a life "in service" to the English middle classes, less Downton Abbey, more Down-town Alley…
Marrying later in life, she has four children. This is her story, in her own inimitable words, of her childhood and early womanhood. She tells of battling alone through the Second World War, dealing with the death of her 6 year old son and of discovering her husband, MIA, has been interred in a Japanese POW camp. The book ends when she is 50, in 1961, when another tragedy changes her life forever.