Ivy realised she was, but there were questions to be asked first. ‘How are the kids? Were they ever so upset when you told them about what ’appened?’

‘Marjorie and I told them together, and there were a few tears,’ he replied, concentrating hard on the road ahead. ‘But I don’t think they really understood what had happened and who it had happened to.’

‘Yeah, I did wonder if that would be the case. They was ever so young when they left London, and kids that age ’ave short memories.’ She clenched her fists in her lap, cursing the bloody war that had made strangers of parents to children who’d had to grow up without them.

‘I understand you have two older brothers as well, Miss Tucker.’

‘Please, call me Ivy,’ she replied. ‘I never was one to stand on ceremony.’

He nodded briefly in acknowledgement but didn’t ask her to call him Richard.

‘Yeah, I got two brothers, Mick and Stanley. They joined the Merchant Navy when I were in junior school, and rarely come home when they was on leave. They’ve been on the Atlantic convoys, so I were lucky I ain’t lost them an’ all – but to be honest, I’d be ’ard pushed to recognise either of them.’

He gave a sigh and brought the car to a gentle halt at a T-junction. ‘I hear so many stories of families torn apart by the war. It’s a real tragedy.’

He checked nothing was coming and slowly pulled away to the left which turned out to be a narrow, twisting country road lined by hedgerows. ‘It was one of the reasons Marjorie and I decided to take in evacuees,’ he continued. ‘We have a large, comfortable home, but sadly no children of our own, and wanted to offer a safe and loving haven to the little ones who needed it.’

‘They was lucky to land with you,’ said Ivy, ‘and I can’t begin to tell you ’ow much it meant to all of us to know they was being looked after so well.’

She began to take in her surroundings as they entered a street lined with smart thatched houses of honey-coloured stone. There were flowers in the neat front gardens which were shaded by delicate trees bursting with blossom, and at the end of the road where it branched left and right, sat an ancient church.

‘It was we who were lucky,’ he replied, bringing the car to a standstill outside one of the houses. ‘Elsie and George are wonderful children, with lively personalities and clever, inquisitive minds. Elsie is a little young yet to determine where her strengths lie, but George’s headmaster is convinced he’ll sail through the grammar school entrance examinations next year.’