Dora shook out her wet coat and hung it on a hook in the downstairs corridor, then pulled off her wellingtons and put on the shoes she kept at the Hall. Not a good start to the day: rain running down the back of her neck, despite her rain hat and umbrella and, even more annoying, Phil in another of his black moods, and making snide remarks about her.

She would never forget his jealousy and suspicions about her so-called secret on the night Gina was born. She’d put up with it for years, although he’d never referred to it before in front of the girls. Dora hoped this was not the start of a season of blacker moods and worse temper in her difficult husband. Was that when their marriage started to go wrong, or had it been failing even before then? It was hard to remember a time when they were happy, before this darkness descended on Philip …

Dora held her newborn baby in her arms. She was a beauty, with fine dark hair and the softest skin on her perfect little body.

‘A lovely girl,’ said Betty Travers, the midwife. ‘All the right limbs in all the right places and a good weight, too. A wonderful start to the New Year: a baby born just on the stroke of midnight.’ She opened the bedroom window just a crack so that Dora could hear the church bells in Little Grindle ringing in 1939, then quickly closed it again. Betty didn’t believe in fresh air for her new mothers and babies, especially in January.

Dora smiled tiredly. It was wonderful to have a second daughter, a sister for Nellie to play with. Nell was little more than a baby herself, a clever little thing, walking and trying to speak, though she wouldn’t be two until the autumn. Dora had hoped for a daughter but kept this to herself because Philip had said he wanted a son. Well, he had a second lovely little girl and she just had to hope he’d come round to the news when he saw her.

Dora smoothed the baby’s damp hair. Oh!

‘Betty, she’s got a little mark just here … look. Is summat wrong? It won’t get bigger, will it? She won’t be scarred?’

Betty took the baby in her arms and looked closely. ‘Oh, bless you, Dora, it’s just a tiny birthmark. It might even fade as she gets older, but it certainly won’t get bigger. And she’s lucky it’s behind her ear: by the time this dark hair has grown it’ll be completely hidden. Don’t you fret, love, there’s nowt to be worriting over.’

Philip thought very differently, though, when he came in to see his new child.

‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, seeing the tiny birthmark straight away. ‘It looks like a little crescent moon, same as the one our Tom has on his arm.’