‘We all believed your letter about going to Penrith to see your aged aunt.’

‘You must have guessed by now that I’m rather good at telling lies,’ Sybil said, blushing.

‘Why did you set off like that in the first place?’ Matron asked. ‘Why didn’t you leave the detective work to the police rather than go haring off in your condition?’ She shook her head in despair. ‘When I think of what could have happened to you,’ she declared.

Too weak to go into detail, Sybil just raised her eyebrows. ‘It was something I just had to do, a debt I needed to repay.’

Rearranging the pillows behind her patient’s head, Matron smiled. ‘Whatever your motives might have been, you paid a high price. Nevertheless, you have certainly made one mother very, very happy.’

‘Rosie,’ Sybil murmured. ‘How is she?’

‘If you could have seen her face when those children ran on to the ward,’ Matron recalled. ‘The relief and love, it took so much of her pain and suffering away.’

Tears welled up in Sybil’s green eyes. ‘That’s all I wanted; I couldn’t bear the idea of her suffering any more. She’s been put through the mill and back again.’

‘I have to tell you they arrived here filthy dirty,’ Matron chuckled.

‘They’ve been living on the streets,’ Sybil informed the nun. ‘You should have seen the place where I found them: bombed-out ruins everywhere, open sewers, shattered apartment blocks – they were even begging for food. God knows where they slept.’

‘Or how they even got to London in the first place; they certainly didn’t have the train fare,’ Matron pointed out. ‘They’re really keen to see you, but I told them you must get some rest before you have any visitors.’

Grateful for her care, Sybil settled back on her pillows and closed her eyes. Five minutes later with the curtains drawn, Sybil was in a dead sleep while her new son, Monty’s lookalike, kept the entire Mary Vale nursery awake for most of the night.

Ada, who had popped over to the Home to get an update on the runaway children, was thrilled to hear from Mary Paul that they were safely back with their mother.

‘The police have been notified, along with poor Mrs Larkin,’ the old nun informed Ada. ‘The search is off.’

Sitting at the large, scrubbed wooden kitchen table, Ada gave a big sigh of relief. ‘Thank God.’

Ada’s big blue eyes flew open in surprise when she heard of Sybil’s role in it all.

‘Extraordinary.’ Ada paused and cocked her head. ‘How did Sybil manage to achieve what the police couldn’t?’