Poppy Petals in the Rain

Jonathan Wilkins
Works of: Fiction

In Poppy Petals in the Rain we meet out two heroes in 1922. The Great War is in the past and Lady Pandora Ophelia Penelope Loveday, Poppy to her friends is studying in Oxford separated from her lover, Élodie Proux who is in the final year of her Arts degree, based in Paris. It is not easy for them as they love each desperately and look forward to their brief moments together.
Memories of their time at the Western Front come to the surface as they visit the orphan’s Jacinth and Raoul who saved their lives in Lozingheim as our heroes fought spies and assassins at their Casualty Clearing station in 1917.
Her brother Alfie is undercover in Belfast, infiltrating anti government cliques.
In Oxford Poppy visits a raucous meeting discussing the Irish Problem and has to face the consequences of a speech that her teacher makes before being whisked away to Belfast by her secret service brother Alfie who needs her to help with an undercover operation.
In Belfast they face murderers trying to undermine the treaty.
Poppy continues through her examinations, writing to her lover.
Finally examinations are over and Élodie returns having displayed her art work at an extravagant exhibition in Paris.
Back in Oxford, the two lovers are soon embroiled in another Fenian plot.
They are offered a job teaching at Nemesis Hall by their old VAD commander and as a reward to themselves, they take a holiday in the south of France where they tackle jewel thieves on the Cote D’Azure.
Finally it is aboard the Wagon Lit and the next chapter in their story