Five minutes later Henry was on his way back to his house, his wife and her father. This couldn’t have come at a worse time. Damn and blast the little guttersnipe to hell!

Isabel sat with her father and mother in the drawing room. Her father was telling one of the long-winded stories that required no answers, just an expression of rapt interest. Her father’s stories always entailed a long boring account of how he had done someone down, as he put it. He had no time for the King, the army, suffragettes, or anything else that might be a topic of conversation in more moderate households. Any mention of suffragettes would indeed result in a long diatribe on the failings of womanhood in general going back to Eve, the mother of all sin. Isabel noticed that her own mother had dropped off to sleep in front of the fire.

She was almost pleased when Henry came into the room. He walked across to her with his usual beaming smile and kissed her on the cheek. Getting up stiffly, Isabel excused herself and went down to the kitchen to see how the food was progressing, feeling the tightening in her chest. It was a feeling of complete hopelessness.

How long must I endure this existence?

O Lord, how long?

Briony lay back against the pillows and waited for her mother to arrive. She had insisted to Mrs Horlock that her mother be sent for as soon as possible and eventually, after some cajoling and a few tears, Mrs Horlock had reluctantly sent Cissy to collect her in a cab. Briony looked around the little room with wide eyes. Her longing for this comfort had brought her to this. She was just twelve and now she was having a baby.

A tiny part of her was thrilled at the thought. Having lived around babies all her life they were not an unknown quantity. But with all the upset over her father, and Eileen’s involvement in it, she knew that this was not a time for anything like this to be happening. It would have been bad enough at any time, but now ... She bit her lip.

She heard her mother arrive and watched the door with trepidation. Molly came into the room like a whirlwind.

‘Are you all right, child?’ Cissy’s arrival had frightened her more than she liked to admit. Briony, who had been fine up until seeing her mother, promptly burst into tears.

‘Oh Mam, Mam!’

It was what she had called her mother as a small child and Molly was reminded of the tiny red-headed baby she’d loved so well.

She pulled her child into her arms, the first time she had touched her without shrinking for over a year.

‘There now, me pet, what’s wrong? Have you a pain?’ Cissy had told Molly nothing other than that Briony wasn’t very well.

‘Oh, Mam, I’m going to have a baby!’