‘I hope so.’ Rose had a few days to go yet and there had been no news thus far. Highfield seemed so far away, another world of soft calm voices, loving arms and peace and quiet. Rose had written to say that she had engaged a nursery maid and he was relieved about that. He’d been worried she would insist on trying to take care of the babies without any help at all.

An hour later and he was on his way, unutterably glad to leave the stink of the trenches behind him if only for a few days. He’d never thought of himself as a particularly fastidious individual, but the mud and foul water and lice would try anyone. He hoped the colonel was wrong and they weren’t going to be stuck in limbo for months on end; trench warfare was not his idea of fighting the enemy.

But now, now he was going home to Rose and Highfield.

Rose awoke from a fitful sleep in the middle of the night and she realized the babies were coming. The unmistakable cramping pains that had heralded Betsy’s birth were beginning and she knew they would get worse. But she was glad. The last two weeks her stomach had been as tight as a drum and so distended she’d wondered if her skin would split, and she knew from the gradual lack of movement inside that the babies had very little room to manoeuvre. As though to deny this she felt a series of kicks that made her wince even as she smiled to herself. ‘Come on then,’ she whispered. ‘Come and meet your mam.’

She got out of bed, walking slowly into her bathroom, and once she had finished in there she didn’t return to bed but took the armchair in front of the window and sat staring out into the dark night. It had snowed for the first time the day before, a light dusting that was pretty rather than an inconvenience, but inside the room it was warm and comfortable, the fire in the ornate grate having been piled high with coal before the maid attending it had retired. Now it cast a flickering glow over the two cribs swathed in white lace that were waiting for their occupants.

At the moment the pains were no more than if she had indulged in too much fruit and she didn’t want to wake anyone yet, enjoying these last moments with the babies before they were born and the unique closeness between a mother and her unborn children was gone. For nine months only she had known when they were awake and moving about, or sleeping.