Thinking of what her dear friend and colleague had suffered, the deaths of her twin boys, both lost in active service – one at Dunkirk, the other on a minesweeper in the North Atlantic – brought tears to Ada’s dark-blue eyes. After she suffered a nervous breakdown, it had looked like Nurse Dora Saddleworth would never return to work, but her love of new-born babies and her loyalty to Mary Vale had lured her back. Though now physically half the size of the woman she had been and with hair that had turned pure white almost overnight, Dora was back among them and the Home was a happier place for her presence.

As Ada assisted the young girl, her thoughts drifted to the many other girls she and her devoted colleagues, nuns and nurses alike, had assisted through hard times when nobody wanted to know them. Some poor wretches had just been dumped on the streets; others whisked off to the Home the moment their pregnancy began to show; some came alone and in secret. Rich and poor, educated professionals and ignorant girls who didn’t even know where their babies had come from, they all went to Mary Vale in search of sanctuary. And the generous spirit of the place never failed them. The foundations of the building had been a tenth-century monastery, originally a refuge and stop-off point for pilgrims bound for Furness Abbey. For over nine centuries the ancient house which looked out over the ever-changing face of the vast Irish Sea and the majestic sweep of Morecambe Bay had never failed to provide sanctuary for travellers in need. Ada loved every aspect of it and was especially fond of the view of the valley from the back of the Home. Dotted with sheep farms, the rocky ground steadily rose higher and higher, until it merged into the lower fells of the Lake District, where Ada had spent her honeymoon and later conceived the child that she was carrying.

Buttoning up her nightie after applying the herbal cream, the young girl interrupted Ada’s reverie. ‘Thanks, Sister, that feels much better already.’

‘Don’t forget – three times a day,’ Ada told her patient before she went on her way.