However, the East End soon became the target for mass bombing during the Blitz, and she’d reluctantly sent them away again. This time, they’d really fallen on their feet, for the middle-aged couple in Salisbury wrote regularly to report on their progress, and even enclosed snapshots of them so their parents could see how well they were doing. Ivy knew that her mother had found great comfort in those small kindnesses, but, like Peggy, still found it very difficult to cope without her little ones.

Ivy stared unseeing out of the window. They weren’t so little now, for five years had passed since she and her parents had waved goodbye to them at the station with their name tags hanging on string around their necks, their brown paper parcels of clothes clutched in their small hands. The memory of those tear-streaked and bewildered baby faces had haunted her for days until that first letter had arrived from Mrs Johnson assuring the family that she and her husband would take the very best care of their precious little ones.

Ivy’s mother had sent on a couple of photographs she’d received when they’d started school, so she had a fair idea of what they looked like now, but they wouldn’t know her from Adam, she realised sadly.

The train stopped and Ivy watched disinterestedly as the passengers poured on, filling the compartments and squashing in along the corridors with their shopping bags and suitcases. She was thinking about Elsie and George and how they might have taken the news that their parents and big sister were gone. Ivy had no doubt that Mr and Mrs Johnson had tried to keep the memory of their parents and scattered family alive, and would have broken the news as gently as possible, but had the children really understood the meaning of their loss, and its consequences?

As the train pulled out of the station and picked up speed, Ivy hauled down her small, heavy case from the luggage rack and placed it between her feet, then sat back down and adjusted the hat Sarah had lent her for the journey to a better position, and buttoned up her navy linen jacket. Her sprigged cotton dress was proving a bit too flimsy for the chilly but bright weather.

Rita had given her a powder compact for Christmas, and she used the mirror to check that her lipstick hadn’t been smeared. Snapping it shut, she dropped it into her capacious bag along with the packet of uneaten sandwiches, two comics and a bag of sweets she’d bought at Waterloo station as gifts for the children.