Once the baby was clean and dressed, Holly carried her back upstairs to her mother while Emma followed with a large tea tray and some shortbread biscuits.

Ivy had washed and changed by then and she held her arms out for her baby immediately, and Holly and her mother exchanged a relieved glance.

‘I thought you might be a bit peckish after all that effort so I’ve brought you some biscuits,’ Emma told her.

‘Peckish? I’m bloody starvin’,’ Ivy declared in her own indomitable way. ‘Just pass the tray over here!’

They all laughed as she balanced the baby in one arm while snatching at the biscuits with another.

‘And when you’ve had your fill it’ll be time to give the baby hers,’ the midwife warned as she washed her hands in the bowl Emma had placed ready for her, but Ivy didn’t even flinch let alone protest.

Minutes later the baby was suckling at her mother’s breast and Ivy had a blissful smile on her face.

‘So what are you going to call her?’ Holly could hardly drag her eyes away from the happy picture.

Ivy frowned. ‘Well, seein’ as I weren’t plannin’ on keepin’ her I haven’t given it a lot o’ thought, but somethin’ will come to me.’

‘Does that mean you are planning on keeping her now then?’

Ivy grinned sheepishly as she glanced up at her friend. ‘Too bloody right I am! She’s just perfect, ain’t she?’

‘Absolutely,’ Holly and Emma agreed in unison and then they were all laughing again.

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘And so she’s decided to call the baby Alice. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it?’ she said to Richard as they sat together in the hospital canteen a couple of days later. Luckily she had been able to telephone him at the hospital from her mother’s to explain where she was when she had dashed off to be at Ivy’s side. She’d also spoken to Matron who had given her a bit of a telling-off, but Holly was still pleased that she’d gone. She wouldn’t have missed little Alice’s birth for the world. ‘She looks just like Ivy,’ she gabbled on. ‘And—’ She stopped abruptly when she saw that Richard was laughing at her.

‘Do you know you haven’t stopped speaking about that baby for the last ten minutes? I’m beginning to get a bit jealous,’ he teased.

‘Sorry.’ Holly grinned at him. ‘But when you meet her you’ll see why I’m so besotted with her.’

‘Hmm, sounds to me like this little Miss Alice has turned you all broody. And if that’s the case I shall have to make an honest woman of you, shan’t I?’

When Holly almost choked on the mouthful of tea she was in the process of swallowing he thumped her on the back.

‘Was that a proposal, Dr Parkin?’ she squeaked when she’d got her breath back, her eyes like saucers.

‘I think it was. Not the most romantic of ones I admit. But what do you say?’