Alexander was home in time for Christmas. Although a shadow of his former self, he appreciated every moment. He’d broken down when he had first seen his boys. Both the twins were crawling now and into everything, William in particular keeping Jinny on her toes. Perhaps it was indicative of his nature that his first word was ‘No’. James’s, on the other hand, was ‘Mamma’.

It made it all the more poignant for Alexander that the stalemate in the trenches on the Western Front made this, the third Christmas of the war, the bleakest for those still in France. Two years ago the men of Europe had gone to war cheerily confident of ‘being home for Christmas’. There was no such optimism now. Neither side had achieved the breakthrough they had sought and the cost in lives was immense. The great British offensive at the Somme had proved bloody and fruitless; six hundred and fifty thousand Allied soldiers had perished, most of them British, along with five hundred thousand Germans. In places the front lines were changed by a mile or two but rarely for long, and never to achieve the significant strategic gain the generals had predicted.

Rose was unutterably thankful to have her husband home, but at the same time she was frighteningly aware of just how fragile he was, not only in body but also in mind. Arabella’s expression of concern about her son took the form of relentless fussing which tended to drive Alexander to distraction, so in between trying to keep him peaceful and rested and tactfully advising Arabella to give her son time to himself, Rose had her work cut out.

They celebrated the New Year quietly. Thick snow covered the North of England and the weather was bitterly cold. This, added to the harsh fact that a number of households had lost their breadwinner, meant whole families were struggling to keep warm and have enough to eat.

Rose met with Daisy in the second week of January, and put an idea to the other woman that she’d been mulling over for a little while. Betsy had left school now, and although she had decided she wanted to train to be a nurse in the future, for the time being she divided her time between helping Jinny with the twins and working at the bakery with Daisy. Daisy’s assistant had skedaddled to a munitions factory in Newcastle and as Betsy refused any payment for her services, she was doubly welcome as far as Daisy was concerned. Rose’s idea was that they open a soup kitchen at the bakery for those in need in the community, and Daisy embraced the idea wholeheartedly. So it was that every day thereon, from four in the afternoon until six o’clock, the bakery provided soup and rolls for everyone who came, all paid for by Highfield Hall.