Secrets. Lesley Pearse. 2004.

Adele Talbot,is twelve when her sister is killed in an accident. Demented by loss, her mother Rose abuses Adele and she is sent to a children’s home. Betrayed, she soon runs away and walks for two days to find her grandmother in Sussex. 

Honour is not best pleased to meet the granddaughter she never knew she had, but the girl is sick and needs nursing back to health. Thriving in the peaceful Rye marshes, Adele finds a friend in Michael Bailey and she hopes to forget her troubled past. Friendship depends into love as Adele becomes a nurse and Michael joins the RAF - but fate conspires against them. Not only do they face the outbreak of war, but Rose reappears with some devastating family secrets........