‘Oh Kate, I’m all mixed up. I don’t know whether I’m happy or – or sad.’

Rosie was sitting up in bed now, propped against pillows with her son in her arms, flushed and triumphant, yet her eyes still filled with ready tears.

‘Be happy, Rosie. It’s what Danny would want,’ Kate said softly, and touched the soft wispy black hair on the baby’s head tenderly.

‘You – you don’t believe he’s dead, do you?’

Kate shook her head. ‘No, I—’ she began and then corrected herself, conscious of Rosie’s feelings. ‘We’d know. We’d feel it.’

Rosie shifted the baby in her arms. ‘Do – do you want to hold him, Kate?’

Kate smiled and held out her arms. ‘Yes, please, Rosie.’

Sitting holding Danny’s son in her arms was the strangest feeling. Danny’s child; a child that might – had circumstances been different – so easily have been hers. She felt a protectiveness towards the tiny baby boy, a closeness and a flood of love.

‘What are you going to call him?’ Kate asked.

‘Robert – after Danny’s father.’

Kate nodded and said softly, ‘Beth will like that.’ Although she knew the facts, Rosie didn’t seem to remember so readily that Robert Eland had not been Danny’s natural father. But then, she was that much younger than Danny and Kate and had not even the haziest memory of Matthew Hilton. It was quite natural that Rosie should always think of Robert Eland as Danny’s father.

Tears glistened in Kate’s own eyes as she looked up at Rosie again. ‘I’ve just realized – I’m his aunt.’

Rosie’s eyes widened as now she, too, remembered. ‘Of course you are – I was forgetting. Yes – his only aunt.’

She was, Kate thought. Although Rosie was the eldest of five children, all the others were boys.

‘Kate – er—’ Rosie twisted the sheet in her fingers. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Mmm,’ Kate said absently, her attention back on the baby who was beginning to stir. He whimpered and Rosie took him back into her arms and offered him her breast.

‘Would you – I’d love it if you – and I know it’s what Danny would – want . . .’

Kate looked up and grinned. ‘Yes, of course I will.’

Rosie’s eyes widened. ‘Will what? I haven’t asked you yet?’

‘Be his godmother.’

‘How did you know that was what I was going to ask?’

‘Well, you were, weren’t you?’

Rosie nodded and the tiny room was suddenly filled with their laughter.

For the first time, Kate was reluctant to return to Suddaby, and yet she was anxious to see Philip again. She had so much to tell him. She could talk to Philip for he knew all about her. She longed to tell him how she had made up with Rosie and how the birth of their baby had, in a strange way, helped her.