The Code of Love

The Code of Love is Andro Linklater's portrait of a woman's search, for over fifty years, to discover the truth about the man to whom she devoted her life. In the spring of 1939, Pamela Kirrage, headstrong and beautiful, met Donald Hill, a handsome RAF pilot. After a golden summer of courtship, they became engaged. In September, with Britain now in conflict with Germany, their plans disintegrated. Hill was transferred to the Far East to defend Hong Kong. Sensing that he was caught up in the sweep of great events, he began a diary in an old school exercise book. However, officers serving abroad were forbidden to keep such records, so Hill devised a secret code that transformed his words into numbers. When Hong Kong fell to the Japanese and Hill was captured and sent to a prisoner of war camp, he took his diary with him. The Donald Hill who returned from the war, after four brutal years of incarceration, was a dramatically changed man. Though he and Pamela married quickly, once the relief and emotion of their reunion had subsided it was obvious that Donald had been scarred deeply by his experiences. Eventually, tortured by savage flashbacks, he was confined to hospital. Pamela had always known that the numbers in the school book were a code and that somewhere within the lines of figures she would discover the key to understanding Donald's mental collapse. Eventually, after Donald's death, she found a mathematician who was able decode the diary and reveal its account of Donald's suffering in the camps. The Code of Love is an unforgettable love story. It demonstrates vividly what happens when ordinary people are caught up in global events and transports us back to a romantic world that prizes different values: honour, duty, loyalty.