The following week she went to see him again but when she suggested a church wedding his face fell and he looked panicked.

‘Look, I hate to let your mum down, pet. But I don’t think I can face it. Can’t we just slip away and get married quietly on our own? I’m sure the oldies would forgive us eventually under the circumstances.’

‘Let me see what we can do,’ Livvy said and without another word she slipped away to have a word with the matron.

That evening she rang home to tell her mother that she would be staying in Plymouth for at least another week. Giles would hopefully be strong enough to be discharged by then and if that was the case, she would travel home with him on the train and there’d be an ambulance ready to pick them up from the station.

‘All right, darling, but just make sure you have somewhere nice to stay,’ Sunday told her. ‘And give him all our love. We’re all so looking forward to seeing him again.’

The news that Giles would soon be returning home worked better than a tonic on John. Thankfully because the last stroke had not been as severe as the first one, he was now pottering about, although everyone was making sure that he didn’t overdo things.

‘I wish you women wouldn’t keep fussing over me,’ he groaned in frustration, but they simply smiled and took no notice. Already people was chipping in with ideas for Giles and Livvy’s wedding and although Livvy had stated they only wanted a very quiet, simple do it looked in danger of spiralling into a much bigger affair.

Kathy, David and the twins were now happily settled into the lodge and if their bright eyes and smiling faces were anything to go by married life was suiting them very well. Immediately after they had married, David had applied to legally adopt the twins and, because there was no opposition from their birth father, they had been assured that permission should be granted very soon. There was absolutely nothing to stand in his way and already the twins were happily addressing him as ‘Daddy’, so all in all Sunday felt that had worked out very well.

A little over a week later, an ambulance drew up outside Treetops and as Livvy helped Giles down from the back of it they found a welcoming committee standing on the doorstep.

There was Sunday and John, Cissie, George, Edith and Peggy. Kathy had also taken a day off from the hospital and David was beside her with the twins on either side of him and Skippy leaping about in his usual madcap manner.