‘Nurse Branning, would you come with me, please? Nurse Wilson can finish doing that, I need to speak to you and it’s rather urgent.’

Kathy wiped her hands on the towel she had laid ready and followed Matron into the small hospital foyer where she found her mother and George waiting anxiously for her.

Her mother looked pale and George was nervously twisting his cap in his hands as they looked towards her and Kathy suddenly felt sick.

‘Has something happened to one of the children?’ It was her first thought and now her heart was hammering so loudly that she was sure they must be able to hear it.

‘No … Yes … Well, actually we’re not quite sure,’ George stammered. ‘Y’see, I was a few minutes late fetchin’ ’em from school today cos of a puncture I got in the car. It were only a few minutes late, mind, but when I got there they were gone. There weren’t a sign of ’em.’

‘What do you mean … they were gone?’ Kathy said accusingly. ‘Gone where?’

‘We don’t know,’ George admitted guiltily. ‘The teachers didn’t see ’em leave an’ I walked up an’ down the lane fer ages but I didn’t get so much as a sniff of ’em.’

‘Perhaps they got invited to one of their friends’ for tea?’ Kathy suggested, clutching at straws.

George shook his head. ‘I’ve already called round the houses of every one o’ their friends I could think of, but they weren’t at any o’ them.’

Kathy began to anxiously chew on her knuckles as she glanced towards the window. It was already very dark, and a thick hoar frost was beginning to form on the grass.

‘Then we must go straight to the police,’ she said urgently. Suddenly a thought occurred to her and she gasped fearfully. Ben! Could it be that he had taken them off somewhere? As yet she hadn’t mentioned his visit to her mother for fear of upsetting her but now she knew that she must risk it.

‘Mum … I’m afraid there’s something I haven’t told you,’ she began in a small voice and by the time she had finished her tale Sunday was as pale as lint.

‘But surely you don’t think Ben might have taken them, do you?’ she asked and when Kathy nodded, she frowned.

‘But why ever would he do that?’

It was time for the terrible secret that Kathy had kept for all those years to be told. ‘Because …’ she began falteringly. ‘Ben is their father …’

Chapter Forty-Seven

‘It seems that a man and two children matching your descriptions boarded a train for London late this afternoon,’ a police officer informed Kathy later that night. The police had been scouring the town for them ever since Kathy had reported them missing.