Sarah drew her nurse’s cloak around her as she headed along the dock road, battling against the wind. Just when she could have done with getting off shift early, there had been an emergency and she’d had to stay late. It was thankfully nothing to do with the war, but a young boy who’d come in with appendicitis. The surgeon had caught it in the nick of time. Then again, she thought, even this relatively common incident had been affected by the war after all, as the boy’s father was away fighting in France, his mother had been killed in the Liverpool Blitz and the aunt who was caring for him had had to find somebody to look after her own two younger children before she could come to visit. So it had fallen to Sarah to sit with the young patient as he regained consciousness, and reassure him that he would soon be well again and that a familiar face would be with him any minute.

As she neared her front door, Tommy and Danny emerged from theirs.

‘Happy New Year, Sarah!’ Tommy called, his new scarf blowing behind him in the strong breeze. Dolly had knitted it for him for Christmas, as he’d confessed to losing his other one. ‘I’m coming over to yours for the evening. Aunty Dolly said I could.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Sarah. ‘How about you, Danny? Where are you off to?’ She hadn’t seen him to speak to properly since that incident in the kitchen on Christmas Day, what with working at the hospital and helping with the chaos the twins’ arrival had brought. ‘Are you going to see in the New Year with us?’ She tried to keep the hope out of her voice. She didn’t want to sound desperate, and it was a perfectly reasonable assumption that he’d come with Tommy, after all. She grinned at him; she’d make time to see him on his own, and find out if he was still in the same frame of mind as on that momentous night.

Danny looked at her, and she was sure that she wasn’t imagining it when he took a second longer than usual to reply. ‘No, I’ve got to go into town,’ he said.

‘Big party, is it?’ she asked lightly, trying to mask her disappointment. Who would have asked him? Who would be there?

He laughed. ‘No, not quite as exciting as that,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go to work. Something’s up and they need me overnight. Not quite what I’d planned, but nobody else can do this particular task and so they’ve asked me.’