Kitty held her hand up as she saw the raw yearning on Sunday’s face. She had always known how much Sunday had wanted to bear her own child and thought it a crying shame that it had never happened for her.

‘Stop, please,’ she said. ‘It isn’t quite what you think. What I mean is, Richard did blackmail me in the beginning into entertaining his friends – with my mother’s encouragement, of course – but truthfully, once I got used to it I found there were benefits to being an old gentleman’s darling. I suppose that must be some of my birth mother coming out in me,’ she said quietly. ‘I liked being pampered and spoiled, just as I loved the adoration I got from the crowds when I was on the stage. Does that make me a bad person?’

Sunday took her hand. ‘Not at all. It just makes you human. You were a young girl who had her head turned, that’s all, by people who were much older than you and should have known better.’ Sunday was under no illusions.

‘Well, it’s kind of you to say it, but do you feel sad that I’m no longer the young innocent who left here?’

‘Stop this right now,’ Sunday told her sternly. ‘You are just our Kitty. You will always be our Kitty, so let’s have no more of this silly talk.’

Kitty clamped her lips together and eventually Sunday went about what she had been doing, but for some reason a chill had settled in the pit of her stomach and she couldn’t seem to shake it.

Kitty’s labour pains began early the next day when they woke to find the world coated in a thick frost. As a weak wintry sun rose in the sky above Treetops Manor, everywhere looked as if it had been sprinkled with diamond dust but Sunday flew into a panic as soon as she realised what was happening and hardly noticed anything.

‘Tom, go and tell the doctor and the midwife that we need them as soon as possible,’ she ordered. ‘And you, Maggie, will you and Cissie get some boiling water on the go and fetch some towels – lots of them, please. Oh – and could you carry in the crib from the nursery? I have it all ready for the baby. Warm the sheets before you make it up.’

Maggie duly pottered away and returned with the crib which was placed at the side of the bed ready for the new little life that would soon be sleeping inside it. The tiny sheets and baby garments were airing by the fire. At that point Sunday’s stomach began to churn with excitement.

The midwife huffed her way up the stairs almost an hour later. She was a portly woman who had delivered hundreds of babies in her time and Sunday knew that Kitty would be in safe hands. ‘There I was, just about to start icing me Christmas cake when Tom raps on the door.’ She winked at Kitty then to show that there was no hard feeling. ‘Let’s have a look at you then, pet. Hopefully this will be over in no time an’ we can all enjoy getting ready for Christmas then, eh?’