Hélène nuzzled the baby’s neck. Babies – they always had the most wonderful smell. Somewhere beneath the coal tar and talcum powder there was the smell of innocence. Hélène loved that. She thought it didn’t matter what happened out there in the world, not when you held a baby and breathed in all of that beautiful, unspent life. The newsreels were full of the Germans overturning old treaties. Nights of violence in Hamburg and Berlin. The war intensifying in Spain, and none of it with an end in sight. But here, with Sybil, all of the madness melted away.

‘Do you want to take her?’ Hélène asked.

‘You bring her,’ said Samantha. ‘She wants you, Hélène! I can see it in her eyes. She wants her mama.’

*

Noelle had not been planning a great feast, but she was the sort of woman who could make a family banquet out of tinned fish, pickled eggs, and whatever other odds and ends she found in the larder. The things this woman could do with spices were incredible, unknown to even the most daring of the Buckingham chefs. They had brought such otherworldly flavours with them from the Caribbean; the thought of Lord Edgerton, or Graf Schecht, or any of the rest tasting Noelle Archer’s rice and peas brought Hélène untold delight.

Before they ate, they clasped their hands so that Maurice could say grace. ‘For what we are about to receive,’ he whispered, ‘may the Lord make us eternally grateful.’ Then, as he did every night, he raised a glass. ‘To Sidney!’ he declared. ‘Gone, but not forgotten.’

‘To Sidney!’ they all agreed – and, as glasses were raised, Hélène pressed her lips to Sybil’s brow and repeated the words gently in her ear. ‘To your daddy . . .’