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spoiled all the time and the nurses gave them extra cake and they always had someone to dance with at the tea dances and it really wasn’t fair, and the whole thing had turned into a gigantic standoff until Cathryn, who ran the home kindly but with absolute authority, told them all to behave themselves or no blackjack, which calmed things down quickly enough. Lilian had had the temerity to add, ‘So it’s settled, then. No football on the big TV,’ and Cathryn had sighed and said fine, and the men had all kicked off again until Lilian and Ida Delia had quelled them by turning round and – in unison – announcing that they were recent widows.
    Now, Lilian was unusually speechless.
    ‘A baby,’ she said, and her clear, very pale china-blue eyes watered, very slightly. Then she glanced down. ‘Well. Well it will be nice to have a baby.’
    ‘If I’d known you’d enjoy it this much, I’d have had one before,’ said Rosie, delighted.
    ‘Yes, who with?’ said Lilian. ‘Could have been anyone really.’
    ‘Yeah, all right.’
    But Lilian smiled again.
    ‘Well. It is wonderful to have a baby around the place.’
    Rosie nodded. She was beaming, glowing with happiness and excitement. She looked into the fire and dreamed of showing Lilian the little bundle, with Stephen’s blue eyes and her black hair, pink of cheek and round and warm as a loaf of new bread; she dreamed of watching her grow, going to the little village school with her father in the morning, him pointing out the animals and the trees and …
    The two women sat companionably together, both lost in reveries.
    It was the last peaceful moment Rosie was to know for a long time, for the tinsel was gone, the joyful lights had been put away and the Christmas bells had ceased to chime. A dark door had somewhere slammed open, and a cold, desolate wind was beginning to blow.



Chapter Three
    For the days they are gone and the night soon must fall
    No longer will oxen stand warm in the stall
    But surrounded by darkness his power glows bright
    His love heals and guides us through cold endless night
    The prince of compassion concealed in a byre
    Watches the rafters above him resplendent with fire
    ‘The Nurses’ carol’
    Moray’s kindness and gentleness oddly enough made it worse.
    Rosie and Moray were best friends really. She was used to them sharing a bottle of wine, slagging each other off, making stupid jokes. As he was the local GP and she an ex-nurse, she often helped him out with certain patientshere and there when they were short-handed – it was very hard to get full community coverage out in the wilds of Derbyshire, where farmers lived few and far between, and disliked being treated by outsiders. So she and Moray were good muckers, ever since her arrival in Lipton two years before, all alone and a complete stranger to country life.
    So it was hard to see the sadness in his shrewd blue eyes, and to hear the tenderness with which he’d said, ‘Oh Rosie, I am so sorry’ when she came back after the awful trip to the hospital in Carningford, after the awful, awful ultrasound, Stephen standing there gripping her hand tightly as they both looked at the little screen, Rosie with blue gel on her tummy, both of them staring quietly, endlessly at the grey, fuzzy, indefinable space where they’d expected to see a baby.

    Rosie had swallowed hard.
    ‘It’s just our first shot,’ she had said, bravely echoing words she’d heard other people use over the years. ‘We weren’t even trying for a baby, were we? It’s just one of those things.’
    The radiographer had politely retreated from the room to find a doctor.
    ‘Stop it, love,’ said Stephen, his throat tight, holding her close.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Stop doing that Rosie thing and trying to make everything all right. Okay?’
    Rosie swallowed.
    ‘I … I don’t know how. I mean, we have to just pick ourselves up and … It happens all the time and …’
    ‘Ssssh,’ said Stephen, gathering her