‘It’s David. I’ve sent for the doctor.’ Barnaby’s eyes never left his son’s face and crossing to him Margaret took his wrist and felt for a pulse.

‘Hm, well I’m afraid there is nothing he will be able to do,’ she said quietly. ‘This child is dead. Has been for a few hours, I should say. He’s stone cold.’ Turning to Amber, she demanded, ‘Where were you?’

‘I-I was right there in the next room and I always leave the door open. I didn’t hear a thing after he woke once in the night. He seemed perfectly all right when I left him.’

‘But he clearly wasn’t,’ the woman snapped disparagingly and Amber felt tears of regret start to her eyes. Was this her fault? she wondered. Why hadn’t she noticed that something was seriously wrong?

The doctor arrived within half an hour and it was all he could do to prise the child from his father’s arms. Barnaby hadn’t said a single word since he’d told Margaret that he’d sent for the doctor and it was clear that he was deeply in shock.

‘It looks like his little heart gave out,’ the doctor said when he had gently examined the little boy. ‘I’m so sorry, Barnaby, but to be honest I’m surprised he lived as long as he did.’

‘Is it my fault?’ Amber asked in a small voice as tears rolled down her cheeks.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Absolutely not, lass. This could have happened at any time.’

This at least made her feel a little better but only marginally.

The doctor laid David back in his crib and gently pulled a blanket over his ashen little face. ‘I’ll call in to the undertaker’s on my way home and get him to fetch him.’

‘No!’ Barnaby’s head snapped up. ‘He can lie here in the drawing room until the funeral.’

‘Very well, in that case the undertaker can come and measure him for a coffin.’ The doctor laid his hand on Barnaby’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said once more and with a shake of his head he lifted his bag and left.

Barnaby sat staring into space, lost in his grief, until Charlotte’s disgruntled whimpers turned to angry wails and it seemed to snap him out of his spell.

‘I think she wants feeding,’ he said quietly and rising, he left the room.

*

The day of David’s funeral dawned exactly one week later and as the horse-drawn hearse drew up outside, Amber and Becky watched from the window of the nursery with tears rolling down their cheeks. Two men dressed in black tail-coats and wearing tall silk top hats bore his tiny coffin from the house and gently placed it inside the hearse.