Sybil shook her head. ‘You should be visiting your mother, not me,’ she told him firmly.

‘She’s with the doctor,’ he replied.

‘Please come and look for shells on the marsh with us,’ Sally sweetly suggested.

Five minutes later, breathless Sybil, unable to resist, was striding along trying to keep up with Sally and Ronnie, who raced over the sandbanks like lively young puppies. The contrast between finding them filthy dirty and destitute in London and how they looked now, happy, healthy and suntanned in the bright sunshine, was dramatic.

‘What if I hadn’t found them in Finsbury Park?’ Sybil shuddered. ‘Would they have ever made their way back to Mary Vale and their mother?’

Sybil was stopped in her tracks by the sound of somebody calling her name, and, turning around, she gasped in surprise when she saw Rosie hurrying towards her.

Girding herself, Sybil thought nervously, ‘She’s going to give me a ticking-off for taking her children out of the Home without asking her first.’

As the squealing children chased after each other on the winding sandy path, Rosie, looking stronger and walking a lot more quickly than she previously had, caught up with Sybil.

‘I thought I would join the kiddies,’ she announced in a voice that was softer and quieter in tone than the one she had used in the days since their falling out.

After a few minutes of awkwardly walking along in silence, Rosie broke the ice. ‘I’ve been discharged from the hospital too.’

‘So you’ll be heading back to the Home?’ Sybil enquired.

Rosie nodded. ‘In that big family room without my children.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘Grim.’

Trying to be positive, Sybil said feebly, ‘They’ll be back with you soon too, surely, now you’re better?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rosie answered quickly. ‘But I think there are too many bad memories here for them.’

‘I’m sorry, I know it’s my fault,’ Sybil muttered guiltily.

‘It’s not just what you got up to, though there’s no doubting they had a hard time at Mary Vale – plus losing the baby didn’t help either,’ Rosie said frankly. ‘We all know they’re much better off at Hope Farm: it’s the best home they’ve ever had, and the Larkins are saints as far as I’m concerned. It seems wrong to drag them away now when they’ve settled down.’

‘Couldn’t you move in with them?’

‘Me, on a farm?’ Rosie actually burst out laughing at the thought. ‘Pigs would fly first.’ As the smile fell from her face, she murmured, ‘And there’s no way we can go back to Finsbury Park for a very long time.’

Having seen the carnage done by Hitler’s Messerschmitt bombers, Sybil fervently agreed with Rosie.

‘You definitely cannot go back there.’