This is it, Lily thought. The baby is coming. Waiting for another contraction to pass, breathing through the pain, she felt almost delirious with fear. In her mind, the baby about to emerge from her body would look exactly like Henry Bateman, even down to the suit and polished shoes, a thought that filled her with dread. The man she had at first so admired had turned into a gutless philanderer – she wanted to strike him from her life, yet here she was tied to him forever. However hard she tried, she found it impossible to separate the baby from the thought of him. They were inextricably linked.

The weeks and months since she’d arrived at the bakery carrying this secret had passed so quickly and now here she was, the baby restless and coming earlier than expected, with Lily feeling utterly unprepared for the birth. Obsessive thoughts about how her own mother had died in childbirth crowded her mind. Would the same fate befall her?

Lily cast her mind back to being four years old. One day she was happily sitting on her mother’s lap in a rocking chair listening to her mother sing to the baby inside her. The next day, her mother and the baby were dead. While Lily was packed off to an aunt’s house, her father locked himself away in his study, pouring his feelings into a vault he would never again open, not even when Lily begged him to. Her father’s stoicism suppressed all emotion, regarding it as vulgar and weak. And wasn’t he acting the same way now?

‘John, you get back to the ovens,’ she heard Audrey saying outside the bedroom door. ‘Deliveries don’t stop for anything, bombs or babies. Elsie, who was that young man you were with? Never mind. You can help me. I sent Charlie for the doctor, but he’s gone to see the Christmas pantomime! I suppose even the doctor needs a night off.’

As another contraction surged through her in a tidal wave of pain, the enormity of her situation struck her with such force, she let out a phenomenal scream. She was about to become a mother of a child she hadn’t wanted. What kind of woman did that make her? When thousands of people were dying in the war – including dearest Jacques who she would never forget – how could she give up on this new life before it had even begun? Shouldn’t she be braver? Wasn’t she putting her head in the sand, just as her father did? Refusing to consider another path in life? Other girls in her situation really did have no option, but with Audrey’s support, could she make it work to look after the child herself?

‘You’ve left the blackout blind up,’ Elsie was saying, in the room now, pulling down the blind.

‘Oh gracious me!’ said Audrey. ‘I forgot all about it. We’ll be fined!’

Lily was incredulous that Audrey and Elsie were talking about the blackout curtains of all things when her body was being ripped apart with pain. Feeling strangely detached from their conversation, as if she was watching herself from the corner of the room, Lily’s eyes moved over the little bedroom that had become her home these last six months. It was so familiar now: the floral wallpaper, the framed ‘Home Sweet Home’ embroidery on the wall, the dark stained floorboards and windowsill crowded with her books, the white cage with Bertie inside and Jacques’ sketch propped up on the bedside table. Her life in London felt more than 100 miles away. It felt as if it was on the other side of the earth. She knew she wasn’t equipped to live a completely new life as a mother of a child. Look at her. She was hopeless, wasn’t she? It’s the war, she heard Audrey’s voice in her head, it makes people act in a way they wouldn’t normally. She thought: Could I? Could I be a mother? But she had promised Audrey she could adopt the baby. Questions without answers streamed through her head. It was the pain and the exhaustion making her confused.

As if reading her tumultuous thoughts, Audrey squeezed Lily’s hand and said: ‘You know what they say; if you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?’

After another three hours of agonising pain, in the early hours came the final contraction that delivered the baby into the world. With one last push, the baby shot into the room at the same time as Old Reg’s wife, Milly, a retired maternity nurse, arrived at the bakery to help.

‘Just in time,’ Milly said. ‘Well done, Lily, you’ve a beautiful baby girl.’

Audrey and Elsie had tears running down their cheeks as the baby let out her first cry, her little arms already punching at the air. Lily made an exhausted whimper, hardly daring to look at the child, unsure that she should. But when Milly wrapped her in a white baby blanket and gave her to Lily to hold, a kind of euphoria took over and she was instantly entranced.

The baby looked nothing like Henry Bateman. With a shock of copper hair and porcelain white skin, she resembled only Lily and seemed to hold the answer to all of life’s questions in her face. Speechless, but holding the baby in her arms, Lily stared into her tiny features, enraptured by her tiny fingers and toes. Numb with shock, she looked up at Audrey and Elsie, who were gazing at her with pure love and friendship in their eyes. Lily felt that at this moment she was driven not by fear, but instinct. Moving closer to her daughter’s face, she kissed her silken skin in amazement.

After minutes had passed, she faced Audrey, who she knew so wanted to be a mother and who she had already asked to take care of this child, but now she had held this baby girl in her arms, now that she realised that the baby was not a carbon copy of Henry Bateman, was not an embodiment of a mistake, but a brand new chapter, a brand new life, a tiny version of herself, she thought: how can I part with her? It was like a switch in her brain had been flicked.

‘I didn’t know it would be like this,’ she whispered to Audrey. ‘I don’t know if I can… Oh Audrey, I’m so confused. I’m sorry.’

Lily burst into tears and Audrey sat down beside her and the baby, brushing back the strands of hair that were stuck to Lily’s damp forehead.

‘I know,’ Audrey said in a barely audible whisper, a silent tear running down her cheek, a warm, wobbly smile on her lips. ‘I understand.’

‘When my father sees her, he won’t be able to turn us away,’ Lily said. ‘She looks just like me and just like my mother.’

Audrey took a deep breath and straightened up. ‘Let me make you a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘You must be gasping!’

‘What will you call her?’ asked Elsie, as Audrey opened the door to fetch the tea.

‘Joy,’ Lily said. ‘Her name is Joy.’

---

In the hallway outside Lily’s bedroom, the smile slipped from Audrey’s face. Leaning against the wall, she took a deep, raspy breath, fighting the selfish disappointment that twisted in her gut. She’d known the instant the baby was born that Lily would not part with her.

It wasn’t going to be easy for Lily, but Audrey would do everything she could to support her, and the baby of course; but the emotional turmoil of the last few months, not knowing what Lily would do and whether Audrey herself would have the chance to become a mother, had taken its toll. She felt suddenly exhausted and wanted to be with Charlie, to have him hold her in his arms and comfort her. She had to accept that perhaps she would never be a mother. Perhaps it wasn’t her role in life.

‘I can’t say I’m not relieved,’ said Charlie, matter-of-fact, when she broke the news. ‘But how the bloody hell is she going to manage on her own?’

Audrey was doing her best to remain positive. ‘We can help her,’ she said. ‘I can help her.’

‘I know you wanted the baby, love, but I’m not in a position to be a father,’ said Charlie. ‘Not now.’

‘Why?’ said Audrey. ‘You’d make a wonderful father.’

Charlie looked at the floor. ‘Because I’ve decided I’m going to sign up after Christmas,’ he said. ‘I’ve made up my mind and nothing you can say will change it.’

Audrey felt a flash of anger ignite in her belly.

‘Winston Churchill said it himself,’ she insisted. ‘“Workmen are soldiers with different weapons but the same courage.” You’re doing your bit for this country, for our community, for our family, right here in this bakery. Why do you have to kill yourself to prove your worth? You’re no less of a man just because you’re not holding a gun.’

Charlie’s mouth was set in a determined line. He shook his head. ‘I’ve made my decision and though my occupation is reserved I’m going to try again to persuade the authorities to let me go,’ he said. ‘I’ve spoken to John and he’s willing to take over here, temporarily, as head baker. Albert can do more too. He’s sixteen soon. We might need to take on an apprentice but I’m thinking on that.’

Audrey didn’t say another word.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ Charlie continued. ‘I’m doing the right thing.’

Though fresh tears were stinging her eyes and her throat was thick with the urge to cry, she nodded curtly at Charlie before turning away from him and walking outside. A freezing wind whipped her hair and stung her cheeks. Violently shivering in the cold, but needing to be alone, she stood with her chin raised, blinking into the darkness, searching the sky for stars. But there were none.