Early the following week, Matron, Ada and Father Ben, the convent priest who ran all the convent business including the adoption arrangements, interviewed the three candidates whom Matron had shortlisted.

Though Ada took an instant shine to the young midwife with the back problems, she agreed with Matron that they simply couldn’t take the risk of employing her.

‘The last thing we want to do is send the poor girl away with more injuries than she arrived with,’ she remarked.

There was no doubt that Miss Mann was the best person for the job, but there was something about her that niggled. After she had accepted the position, Ada had taken her on a tour of the wards and the delivery room, where she certainly asked all the right questions. Stopping to chat to a few of the patients, Miss Mann seemed friendly enough, though Ada noticed she hurried through the noisy nursery seemingly uninterested in the tiny babies Dora and her team were feeding. After Miss Mann had taken the train back to Harrogate, Dora made exactly the same observation as Ada.

‘Miss Mann is certainly qualified enough, but she’s a bit of a cold fish,’ she said, as she and Ada refilled the nappy buckets with fresh sanitizing liquid. ‘Didn’t talk much or ask many questions, and she showed not the slightest interest in our babies,’ Dora added in a slightly offended voice. ‘I don’t know how anybody with a beating heart could resist those little ones lying there all innocent-like in their cribs.’

Ada nodded. ‘She was a bit detached.’

Dora continued, ‘I wonder how well she’ll go down with the girls; a lot of our residents are the salt-of-the-earth type – Sister Mann was a lot more formal than that.’

Not wanting to stoke any fires, Ada answered diplomatically. ‘She was probably on her best interview behaviour.’

‘Mebbe,’ Dora grunted, lugging the heavy galvanized bucket out of the big ceramic sink. ‘It’ll be hard for anybody to step into your shoes, lady, that’s for sure.’

Ada gave her colleague a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘It won’t be forever, dear. Hopefully I’ll quickly recover from the birth and be back with you all in no time.’

Dora, who had suffered too many of life’s hard knocks, didn’t look convinced. ‘Who knows what the future will bring?’

Desperate that Dora shouldn’t fall into the deep depression that she had only so recently beaten, Ada gave a bright smile. ‘You never know,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Now that the Americans have joined forces with us, the war could be over with sooner than we all think.’

Dora threw her a dirty look. ‘They took their time,’ she muttered. ‘It was only the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor that forced the Yanks to get their finger out.’