Peggy put her arms around the elderly woman and held her close. ‘Please don’t, Cordy,’ she murmured, ‘I can’t bear to see you upset.’

‘I’m getting too old for all this uncertainty,’ Cordelia replied, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘Brendon leaving this morning brought it all home again. I’ve been thinking about my brother’s boy Jock out in Singapore, and Martin, Roger and Freddy in that camp, and Jim and Brendon. Now Jack’s caught up in it too. When will it all end, Peggy?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied helplessly.

Peggy looked down at Daisy who was clinging to her legs, her little face puckered with concern for Cordelia. Fixing a smile firmly in place, she put her hand on Daisy’s shining black curls and said brightly, ‘Chloe will be here soon. How about you find your favourite picture book so you can show her your lovely colouring in?’

Daisy happily trotted off to the toy box in the dining room.

‘It’s my nephew Jock and Sarah’s fiancé Philip who worry me the most,’ Cordelia confided. ‘I don’t know how Sarah and Jane are managing to cope with the lack of any real information coming out of the Far East, and the terrible rumours do nothing to assuage the awful fear that they might be dead.’

Peggy had heard those rumours too, and she shivered at the thought of what might happen to Jim if he was taken prisoner in Burma. She kissed Cordelia’s soft cheek. ‘We’ll get through this together,’ she murmured. ‘And when it’s all over, we’ll be stronger and braver and ready to face any struggles that might come with peace.’

The solemn moment was broken by Ivy rushing through the kitchen on the way to meet her Andy, and Daisy toddling in with her colouring book.

Yet, as the day continued, Peggy couldn’t quite dispel the feeling that something momentous, a turning point in this dreadful war, was in the offing, and it would affect them all. She could only pray it would be to the Allies’ advantage.

Despite the awful weather and Peggy’s worry over where Rita and Sarah might have got to, her mood had been lifted after lunch by the arrival of Kitty, Charlotte, Grace and little Chloe. As the children played and squabbled, the women had sat down to catch up on things, discuss plans for the babies’ arrival, and the possibility that at least Charlotte’s mother might be able to get down when the time came. They swapped knitting patterns and cooed over the matinee jackets and bootees Peggy had kept once Daisy had grown out of them while they ate Kitty’s delicious cake over numerous cups of tea.