Blossom in Winter - Frost in Spring — Lucidus Smith

It is April 1948 and the Second World War had been over for two and a half years. Britain was trying to get back to normal, but food and clothes were still being rationed and almost every street in London had its own bomb site, added to which, everything was in short supply, unemployment was high and life was still very difficult and hard for everyone.
One ex-servicemans life was much like anothers; glad to be alive and free, but beset by guilt and sadness for everything that happened to them in the war and filled with bitterness about the way they had been treated since it ended.
Arnold Smith is typical of a soldier who eventually came home, but could not settle back into the old routine, although he had tried hard to, for the last two years. When his sweetheart gave him the bad news that she had found someone else, it was the final straw, so he packed a few things in a bag, got a bus to London's, Paddington railway station and bought a ticket for the next train out. He was not even too sure of where it was going, but he was just pleased that it was going somewhere new!
The book follows Arnold to a new life with new people, but the past keeps catching up with him. Whilst romance and adventure are present, they simply give Arnold and his friends the opportunity to live life to the full and put the past behind them, or to allow grief and self pity to blind them to whatever new opportunities it had in store for them.