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something!’
    Alex shook his head. ‘I didn’t, but what does it matter? As you say, she had a perfect right to be there; a perfect right to pick up her baby as well.’ He added, with more than a trace of sarcasm, ‘I believe it’s customary for mothers to pick up their babies when the little blighters scream for food or need their nappies changing.’
    ‘Oh, Alex, will you be serious?’ Flossy begged. ‘She didn’t just pick up one baby, she picked up two, and I have a feeling that she might have put them back in the wrong cots. Of course, it shouldn’t make any difference because babies are labelled before they leave the delivery room, but tonight people were running around in the dark like chickens with their heads cut off. And there was this gypsy . . .’
    ‘A gypsy?’ Alex asked, surprised. ‘I thought they never entered hospitals, unless they were dying, of course, and couldn’t help it. So if what you’re asking me is whether the woman I saw was a gypsy, I’m afraid I simply can’t tell you. For a start she had her back to me and then the rain was streaming down the window panes, distorting everything inside. But I’m sure mothers know their own babies, so if I were you I’d forget it. It’s none of your business, after all, especially if you shouldn’t have been in there anyway. When you go to work tomorrow you’ll soon find out whether there’s a big ruckus going on over babies in the wrong cots.’
    At this point they reached Dryden Street and Alex slowed beside the house which he remembered was home to the Manners family. He looked doubtfully at the house, which was in total darkness, then gave his companion alittle push. ‘Stop worrying and get yourself to bed,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll wait until you’re safe indoors.’
    ‘Thanks, Alex, you are kind,’ Flossy said, heading for the door. ‘I’ll let you know what happens next time we meet. Good night!’
    Alex raised a hand, then turned smartly and set off to return to his beat and then to the police station. When he got there he would have to write a report before he could seek his own bed, and he thought almost enviously of funny, scrawny little Flossy, probably already crawling between the sheets. But then he remembered her bullying, impatient father, her sharp-tongued, ungrateful mother, and horrible Horace and hateful Hubert; no, she was not to be envied, but rather pitied. Still, she had talked happily of her work in the hospital, her ambition to become a probationer as soon as she was old enough and the fact that, hard though it must be for her, she was already borrowing books from the hospital library and studying anatomy and simple medicine. He decided that all things being equal, Flossy would go far. Only when he had almost reached the police station did he allow his thoughts to return to another of the nurses, whose corn-coloured hair and bright blue eyes had caught his attention when the pair of them had met at the Grafton Ballroom a couple of weeks earlier. Her name was Annabelle, and they had spent most of that evening together and had made a date to go to the cinema the following week. Ah, but she was beautiful! He knew that many girls were attracted by policemen and hoped that she would prove to be one of them. Certainly she was not indifferent. Thinking about her made the walk seem short, and bythe time he was reporting to his sergeant, and hanging his wet garments over the clothes horse in the back room, he had forgotten Flossy and her peculiar problem and had allowed dreams of the beautiful Annabelle to oust everything else from his mind.

Chapter Two
    MOLLY AWOKE, AND wondered for a moment where on earth she was. The ceiling was far too high; the one in the cottage was so low that if you jumped out of bed carelessly you might easily bang your head on a beam. Momentarily disorientated and frightened, Molly stretched out a hand, groping for Rhys’s broad and comfortable back, but all her fingers met was a starched,