The phone call came through late that afternoon and there was no one but Dora to take it. Duty midwife. She’d have to brave it and venture out. It had been nearly two years since the Germans had occupied the place, but she’d never got used to them. It got worse, if anything. Borrowed time. She should have listened to Uncle Otto. ‘Don’t go. You’re safe in London.’ He had been right on that. ‘Why don’t you settle down? Charles has a soft spot for you.’ He’d winked. ‘He’ll go far.’

‘I’m young, Uncle Otto,’ she’d said. ‘I want to enjoy myself.’

He’d huffed and puffed, but he’d never married, so why force her? Jersey was far more inviting. Dancing and singing, sun and sea while London hunkered down with its ARP wardens and Anderson shelters. Where was the danger in Jersey?

What if the Germans were here to stay, like they said? The ‘Thousand-year Reich’.

The wind was dancing like a dervish, thrashing the sea up against the promenade. Dora headed out across the island with her medical bag, head down low over the handlebars, against the storm. It was a farmhouse, she was told, La Ferme de l’Anse. This was not a part of the island she knew well, but the caller had insisted this was an emergency. The phone went dead before she could find out more.

Clouds banked grey and heavy behind the hills. A fork of lightning cleaved them apart and thunder thumped the ground. The clouds rolled closer and rain began to fall in large, thick gobs. Dora could barely see. Some of the road signs were now in German but the caller had used local names and Dora wasn’t always sure. She had no idea what the emergency was about. Hoped it was just the usual panic of the father, ‘come quick, my wife’s in labour’, as if his wife was the first woman to have a child.

Dora wished she had a torch. The rain was thick, the dusk inky. Hedges were gashed apart, trees bent double. And over. A sycamore with a broken back and jagged roots filled the road in front of her and she came to a stop. She would have to turn, approach the farm from another direction, but it was too murky and wet to read the map and it would be easy to make a mistake in the labyrinth of lanes. An emergency. Behind her she heard the scream of a branch, its slow agony as it ripped from its trunk, its roar as it plummeted and fell with a thud onto the road.