September proved to be a trying month. Rose felt as big as a house and the babies were at their most active at night when she was trying to sleep. This, combined with her worry about Alexander and the longing to see him, and the occasional altercation with Betsy who was growing up fast, made her exhausted most days. The war news was mixed; on the one hand the first decisive battle on the Western Front was fought in the middle of the month and the Allies had driven the Germans back to the Aisne and removed the threat to Paris; on the other German submarines sank three British cruisers off the Netherlands in the new war at sea, which was a major setback for the Royal Navy. The army was calling for five hundred thousand more men to sign up, with the aim of placing well over a million soldiers in the field as soon as possible, and although Alexander’s letters were invariably cheerful and positive Rose knew he wasn’t telling her the whole story.

In October, as Belgian cities fell to German troops and the first bombs dropped on London, an advertisement in several Northern papers for a nursery maid brought a number of replies. Rose had insisted she wanted a local lass, someone she could feel at home with, and as soon as the third applicant walked into the room Rose knew she was the one. The first two women had been older and had related a long history of dealing with children, but she hadn’t liked either of them, not least because neither had bothered to hide their surprise and what amounted to almost disdain that she wasn’t from the upper class as they had expected. Snobbery, Rose was finding, wasn’t confined to the aristocracy.

The third woman was considerably younger than the others, only eighteen according to her letter of application, although on seeing her Rose thought she looked barely that. She had bright blue eyes and blonde fuzzy hair and her hat looked as though it would spring off the riot of curls at any moment. She was also clearly nervous, and after the maid had left sat perched on the edge of her seat in the morning room where Rose was lying on a couch, resting her swollen ankles.

‘Good morning,’ Rose said warmly. ‘And your name is?’

‘Davidson, ma’am. Jinny Davidson.’

‘And you say you’ve had experience with children?’