It was still strange to hold her. Hélène felt stabs of guilt whenever she admitted it to herself, but every time she came to the Archers’ home it took her an hour, two, sometimes a whole day to start feeling like a mother again. It isn’t that I don’t want to be here, little girl. You must know that. One day, I’ll tell you it all. How I fell in love with your father. How he fell in love with me. About the day I realised I was pregnant and how panicked and elated we were, all at once. Well, we had to concoct a plan, didn’t we, Sybil? I told my own parents but they near disowned me . . . and all because your papa was black. And a black musician no less! Could anything be any more disgraceful? Well, what other plan was there? I tricked Maynard Charles into resting me from the Buckingham – I told him I was headed to California, to finally try my hand at the silver screen. He took some convin-cing . . . but the idea of an actual movie star gracing his ballroom and all it might do for the Buckingham’s reputation finally swayed him. And I came here and I had you, my baby girl, the only thing that matters in all of the world, and . . . if it hadn’t been for what happened to your father, well, I’d have lived out my days here, as a mother.

But life has a funny way of destroying the best-laid plans, doesn’t it, Sybil?

Dinner had been served around a little wooden table in the living room. Hélène held Sybil, who reached out eagerly for whatever was on the plate, while Maurice regaled them with the stories his fellow railwaymen had told him – the drunk city barrister found asleep on the platform at Euston, who’d woken and thought himself on trial – and Samantha told Hélène every last detail of Sybil’s past weeks: the babbling sounds she made every morning; how she pointed bossily at whatever toy she wanted; which lullabies were her favourite this month, and which would prompt a maelstrom of tears.

As if on cue, Sybil starting babbling now. ‘Dadadadadadadadadaaaa!’ she chanted. Every bit as musical as your father.