‘Thanks, Enid,’ Katie said, touched. ‘I don’t understand it either.’

They sat talking and admiring the baby until Katie realized time was getting on. She gathered Michael up and thanked Enid, before setting out again.

The evening was grey and smoky and she was glad of the gloom as she walked through her old neighbourhood, ghosts of times past all around her. She thought of the old school on Cromwell Street. It had been her favourite school by far, the fun she had had there with Em. Again she felt a deep pang. She pulled the brim of her hat down further and hurried along, lost in thought, wanting to get away from there in case anyone recognized her.

Rounding a corner, she almost collided with someone. They both stepped back, their eyes meeting for a fleeting moment, then hurried on.

‘Sorry!’ the other person called.

It only sank in as she continued along the road: the voice, the pale face she had seen in the dusk. It had been Em – taller and older, but otherwise just the same and immediately recognizable. It had been her, hadn’t it? Emma Brown. All she could remember of the last time she saw Em was a haunted figure in the street when her mother was poorly, hurrying here and there with no time to stop and join in the other children’s games. She ached to think of Em in those days, how skinny and sad she had looked, and how cruel she had been to her.

Sitting on the tram from town to Balsall Heath, looking out at the dark streets, Katie felt very low. She’d lost her father, Uncle Patrick and then Em – and now both Simon and her mother. Was she cursed or something? Was there never going to be anyone she could love who would stay with her? She held Michael close and tight.

‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ she whispered.

He slept on, with complete trust.

1946

II

MOLLY

Twenty-Three

Calais, June 1946

‘Molly – are you awake?’

Molly’s eyes flickered open in the dark Nissen hut. For a second she was confused. She had slept in so many wooden army huts that she could have been anywhere. Her head felt heavy and her mind dull, as if she had had no sleep at all. Close by she made out her friend Cath’s outline, half sitting up in the next bed.

‘I am now,’ she muttered drowsily. ‘What time is it?’

‘Almost five. Sorry if I woke you, but we’ll have to be getting up in a tick anyway.’

‘Sounds as if the wind’s dropped?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

All night a gale had blown, buffeting the hut so that it felt as if it might lift off the ground and be tossed away. They all had high hopes of crossing the Channel first thing that morning, and as Molly listened it did sound as if the wind had calmed.

By eight o’clock they had been at the quayside for half an hour waiting to embark. Around them rose a buzz of excited chatter from this contingent of ATS and a sprinkling of WAAF girls, some of the number who had volunteered for postings to Belgium in 1944 and were now being demobbed. Molly knew that Cath shared their excitement, though she faced a good deal of uncertainty. Her family were in Ireland and she had long left them behind. Instead of returning there, she had decided to wait in London for Derck, her Dutch fiancé, to be released from the army as well. She and Orla, another ATS girl, were planning to try and find digs together. It was going to be very sad to say goodbye.