Excerpt from Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mary was left behind. The green sward of grass beside the abandoned zoo became quiet and still. George Woodall, Jack Taylor and Graham Brown marched with high-swinging arms in the infantry style. John Cumberland, Harry Rogers and Carl Richardson mocked them with chimpanzee grunts from the row behind. Henriette Wisby, Elaine Newland and Beryl Waldorf, the beauties of the class, sashayed with their arms linked, frowning at the rowdy boys. Then Eileen Robbins, Norma Reeve and Rose Montiel, pale with apprehension.

Next went Patricia Fawcett, Margaret Taylor and June Knight, whose mothers knew one another socially and whose own eventual daughters and granddaughters seemed sure to prolong the acquaintance for so long as the wars of men permitted society to convene over sponge cake and tea. Then Patrick Joseph, Gordon Abbott and James Wright, giggling and with backwards glances at Peter Carter, Peter Hall and John Clark, who were up to some mischief that Mary felt sure would involve either a fainting episode, or ink.

Finally came kind Rita Glenister supporting tiny, tearful James Roffey, and then, in the last row of all, Fay George and Zachary. The colored boy dismissed Mary by taking one last puff of his imaginary cigarette and flicking away the butt. He turned his back and walked away with all the others, singing, toward a place that did not yet have a name. Mary watched him go. It was the first time she had broken a promise.

At dinner, at her parents' house in Pimlico, Mary sat across from her friend Hilda while her mother served slices of cold meatloaf from a salver that she had fetched from the kitchen herself. With Mary's father off at the House and no callers expected, her mother had given everyone but Cook the night off.

"So when are you to be evacuated?" said her mother. "I thought you'd be gone by now."

"Oh," said Mary, "I'm to follow presently. They wanted one good teacher to help with any stragglers."

"Extraordinary. We didn't think you'd be good, did we, Hilda?"

Hilda looked up. She had been cutting her slice of meatloaf into thirds, sidelining one third according to the slimming plan she was following. Two Thirds Curves had been recommended in that month's Silver Screen. It was how Ann Sheridan had found her figure for Angels with Dirty Faces.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. North?"

"We didn't suppose Mary would be any use at teaching, did we, dear?"

Hilda favored Mary with an innocent look. "And she was so stoical about the assignment."

Hilda knew perfectly well that she had neither volunteered nor accepted the role particularly graciously nor survived in it for a week. Mary managed a smile that she judged to have the right inflection of modesty. "Teaching helps the war effort by freeing up able men to serve."

"I had you down for freeing up some admiral."

"Hilda! Any more talk like that and your severed head on the gate will serve as a warning to others."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. North. But a pretty thing like Mary is hardly cut out for something so plain as teaching, is she?"

Hilda knew perfectly well that Mary was already suspected by her mother of dalliances. This was typical her: baiting the most exquisite trap and then springing it, while seeming to have most of her mind on her meatloaf.

"I'm just jolly impressed that she's sticking with it," said Hilda. "I can't even stick to a diet."

With unbearable ponderousness, she was using her knife and fork to reduce the length of each of the runner beans on her plate by one third. With diligence she lined up each short length beside the surplus meatloaf.

Mary rose to it. "Why on earth are you cutting them all like that?"

Hilda's round face was guileless. "Are my thirds not right?"

"Just put aside one bean in three, for heaven's sake. It's dieting, not dissection."

Excerpted from Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. Copyright © 2016 by Chris Cleave. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.