When the pains began again, strongly and more frequently, Peggy seemed calmer, although she kept casting anxious glances towards the open bedroom door and straining to hear the sound of footsteps above the noise of the raid going on all over the city.

‘They’re here,’ came Mrs Godfrey’s voice at last. ‘Rita’s found the midwife.’

Tears of relief streamed down Peggy’s face. ‘Oh, thank goodness – we’ll be all right now, Kate.’

Kate did not reply. For the moment, her eyes screwed up with effort and her face growing redder by the second, she was too busy . . .

Peggy, happy now under the midwife’s guidance, bustled up and downstairs, fetching and carrying whatever was needed. Rita was dispatched to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and Mrs Godfrey sat on her sofa downstairs, her hands folded placidly in her lap, waiting to hear the first cry of the newborn baby from the bedroom above her.

Outside the bombs continued to whistle down. They heard another one quite close and as it landed the ground shook and the glass in the bedroom window cracked. But the midwife just stood at the side of the bed, her hand resting lightly on Kate’s stomach. She didn’t even flinch.

Fancy bringing a child into a world like this, Kate thought. I should have been more careful, I should have . . . ‘Aaah . . .’

‘You’re doing fine. Not much longer now,’ came the soothing voice.

Kate’s daughter was born just as the all-clear sounded. It seemed like a good omen.

‘Oh, she’s lovely, Mrs Hilton – just perfect,’ said the midwife as she laid the child in Kate’s arms.

Kate’s eyes roamed over the tiny form, counting fingers and toes and drinking in the look of her child.

‘What’s that mark on her left cheek?’

‘Oh, just a little birth-pressure mark – it will soon fade,’ the nurse said casually, used to reassuring worried mothers.

Kate wasn’t so sure.

On the left side of the baby’s face, just on the line of the jaw, were marks in the shape of two tiny fingers.

Remembering, Kate could almost feel again the stinging slap Esther had dealt her on the side of her face in exactly the same place as the marks on her baby’s.

‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ Peggy cooed as she bent over the cradle the following day. ‘Isn’t she good? I quite expected her to be bawling loudly.’

Kate lay back against the pillows. The first euphoria of the birth had deserted her and now she felt rather tired and strangely lonely, even though Peggy and Mrs Godfrey were ecstatic in their delight in the newest member of their household.

‘What are you going to call her?’

Kate hesitated and then she began to laugh, a little hysterically, so that Peggy patted her hand in alarm. ‘Don’t, Kate, don’t,’ she beseeched.