‘Just take as much time off as you need,’ she had told her kindly, even though the hospital was dreadfully short-staffed. ‘And don’t give up hope.’

Hope was all Kathy had to cling to now and every minute she prayed her babies would come home, but as time wore on – each day seeming like a lifetime – the possibility of her ever seeing them again seemed to be more remote.

She had lost weight and her eyes were haunted but there was nothing anyone could do to help her; nothing anyone could say to make her feel better. All they could do was pray that the nightmare might soon be over, and the children would be back where they belonged again.

In London Ben was also feeling the strain. He and the children had spent the last few nights in a shelter in the underground station close to where they were still staying in the grubby little bed and breakfast. He had managed to find the children some ill-fitting clothes on a second-hand stall in the local market, but the children constantly cried to go home now, even Daisy who at first had tried to be brave for Thomas. The stress of caring for them and knowing that they didn’t trust or like him was beginning to tell on Ben and the nightmares had returned with a vengeance. The children would lie in their bed watching with terrified eyes as he thrashed about and called out in his sleep. Often now a whole day could go by without them even saying so much as a single word to him. One night, Daisy came up with the solution to their problem.

‘Soon as he goes out next time we’re going to run away,’ she whispered to her brother.

‘B-but where will we run to? We don’t know our way home,’ Thomas whimpered.

Daisy frowned, then came up with an idea. ‘We’ll find a policeman an’ tell him that he took us away from our mum. Granma always told us to do that if we got lost.’

Ben had sat them down and told them that he was their father some time ago but neither of the children believed him. Their mum had told them that David was going to be their dad, so this man must be lying.

Now Thomas nodded. ‘All right, but we’ll have to be careful,’ he whispered back. ‘If we run away an’ he finds us he’ll be angry.’

They huddled together in the darkened room waiting for daylight when they could hopefully put their plan into action. Apart from being taken to the shelter when the air raid sirens sounded, they had barely been out of the room for the last two weeks for it was far too cold now to be walking the streets. Ben would go off from time to time and bring back food for them then get annoyed when they refused to eat it.