Sobbing with joy, Vicky pushed herself up against her pillows so that she could look at the miracle lying between her legs. ‘Oh!’ she gasped, her face radiant. ‘Isn’t he wonderful, Zelda? Look how perfect he is! I want to hold him. I want to hold him right now.’

Josephine draped a large soft towel around the still-bawling baby and then, with utmost care, Zelda placed him in Vicky’s arms.

As Vicky gazed rapturously down into the red, wrinkled face, Zelda said unsteadily, ‘Didn’t we do a marvellous job, Vicky darling? Who would have thought I’d be acting as a midwife to you on my wedding day?’

She looked down at her dress, unable to believe she was so uncaring of the damage that had been done to it. Even if the blood and mucus stains came out of the fabric, the hand-embroidered seed pearls would never be the same again.

‘I’m going to call him Maximilian.’ Vicky’s voice was thick with joy. ‘Maximilian Berthold.’

It was such a big name for a little baby that despite the deep emotions she was feeling, Zelda’s dry humour surfaced. ‘That will go down well in Yorkshire,’ she said, vastly amused.

Seeing the joke, Vicky giggled. ‘It’s a pity he wasn’t born in Yorkshire, then he could have played cricket for the county.’

‘Never mind.’ Zelda was all mock sympathy. ‘Perhaps the next boy you have will be born in Little Ridding.’

Bantering at a time like this was incomprehensible to Josephine and she said a little hesitantly, ‘Are you going to cut the cord now, Mrs Remer?’

‘No.’ Zelda shook her head, knowing her limitations. ‘I’m going to let the doctor do that.’

Right on cue there came a brief knock on the door and Dr Soller walked in.

Vastly relieved, Zelda stretched out her aching back. ‘While you’re being attended to, Vicky, I’m going to bathe and change and tell Paul he has a cousin.’

Vicky didn’t reply because she wasn’t listening. She was smiling down into the face of Maximilian Berthold, joy singing through every fibre of her being.

Berthold stumbled out of the small salon, thinking of nothing but the crushing burden now on his shoulders. It was a burden he’d feared as long as he could remember. A burden he’d hoped wouldn’t be his for another twenty, perhaps even thirty, years.

Blindly, he made his way upstairs, wondering how he was going to break the news to Vicky, wondering if Vicky would even begin to realize how drastically their lives would now change.

Entering the room like a man whose world has come to an end he barely registered how radiant and exhausted she looked and was oblivious to the cot by the side of the bed.

As she said ecstatically, ‘Oh, Berthold! Do come! Do look!’ he collapsed on the nearest chair, his words cutting across hers as he said starkly, ‘He’s dead, Vicky. My father is dead. From now on life is going to be different. From now on it’s going to be insupportable.’