‘Are you sure? Sounds just the same to me.’ Pop looked doubtfully at his wife. He wanted to believe her but didn’t trust himself to do so. It seemed no time at all since Rita herself was a baby, a pale-skinned little beauty with deep red hair. Now here she was having her own third child. Where had all those years gone?

‘Mam! Have you got any more hot water down there?’ came a voice from the top of the stairs.

‘I’ll bring it right up, Sarah love.’ Dolly emptied the rest of the water from the kettle into a large enamel jug, and then set another lot to boil just in case. ‘Pop, why don’t you fill the biggest pan from the tap and put that on to heat up as well.’ She bustled to the door, all anxiety gone now that there was something useful to do.

Pop looked around uncertainly. They’d lived in this house for almost all of their married lives and yet he still wasn’t sure where all the utensils in the kitchen were kept. That was Dolly’s territory. Still, this was no time to complain. He opened every cupboard door until he found the pan he hoped she meant.

Meanwhile, Dolly raced up the stairs as quickly as she could, belying her fifty-something years, but careful not to spill a drop of water. ‘Here you are, love.’ She handed the battered jug to her youngest daughter, who swiftly turned back to the bedroom and the screams.

If anyone had told Dolly at the beginning of the war that just a few years later young Sarah would be supervising the birth of Rita’s child, she would have laughed them to the other side of the Mersey. But now she could think of no better person. Sarah might be only nineteen, but she’d started her nurse’s training with the Red Cross as soon as she could and had been thrown in at the deep end, tending injuries during the bombings, coping with all manner of indescribable horrors, as well as delivering babies in the most unlikely places – ruined buildings, air-raid shelters, and once in the middle of a deserted street. Overseeing a birth in the comfort of her own bedroom, with her patient an experienced mother who just happened to be a senior nurse, with the support of their own experienced mother, and endless supplies of hot water and all the necessities, was a comparative luxury.