Sighing happily, Ada went upstairs, where she lay flat on her bed to ease her throbbing back, and, clasping Jamie’s letter to her heart, she fell fast asleep. A few hours later, Ada woke up starving hungry. Blearily making her way down the narrow cottage stairs, she switched on the radio to listen to the evening news before setting about making her supper in the kitchen. Stirring beans in a saucepan and toasting bread, Ada’s blood ran cold as she listened to the BBC newsreader’s voice announcing to the nation that the city of Tobruk in North Africa had fallen to General Rommel on 21 June after a siege of one day, with 19,000 British soldiers taken prisoner.

As the toast caught fire and started to burn, Ada cried out in despair. ‘Oh, my God! Not Jamie, please not Jamie.’

Trembling from head to foot, she flopped down on to the nearest chair, where she gasped as she felt a sudden rush of water trickling down her legs.

‘No!’ she wailed. ‘Not now.’

Desperately trying to steady her nerves, Ada forced herself to breathe deeply; as her heart-beat levelled out, the trembling in her body started to subside. Wobbling uncertainly to her feet, Ada made her way across the kitchen to the back door.

‘All I have to do is get to Mary Vale,’ she told herself. ‘It’s only up the road – I can do that.’

As the sun was slowly setting, Ada made her unsteady way along the farm track, with the distance from home to Mary Vale suddenly seeming like miles. Hearing Farmer Arkwright’s collie dog barking in the yard, she made her way to the farm gate, which she pushed open.

‘Anybody home?’ she called out.

When cheery Farmer Arkwright came striding out of the barn, Ada almost sobbed with relief.

‘I need to get to Mary Vale,’ she told him. A stab of pain in her lower back took her breath away; when it passed, she said feebly, ‘The baby might be coming.’

‘Don’t move!’ Farmer Arkwright commanded. ‘I’ll get the van and take thee there.’

Minutes later he helped Ada into the van’s passenger seat, then, clearly terrified that she was going to give birth right there on the spot, he repeated his initial command, ‘Don’t thee move, lass.’

Driving the rickety old van that smelt of wet dogs and lanoline up the rutted road, he could hear Ada groaning softly under her breath, as she bounced from side to side. When they reached the Home, Farmer Arkwright slammed on the brakes, then raced out of the van to hammer on the stout back door, which was quickly opened by Sister Mary Paul. Jabbing a thumb in the direction of his van, he spluttered, ‘Do summat, woman, yon lass is having a babby!’

The delivery room was already occupied by a resident in labour who couldn’t be moved.