‘It’s a boy.’ She laughed, looking at Charlie kneeling by her side. ‘Charlie, it’s a boy.’
‘It is. The most beautiful little boy there ever was.’ He kissed her soaked forehead softly. ‘You were wonderful, darling.’
‘I’ll leave you alone for a moment,’ Deborah said, getting to her feet. ‘I need to speak a few words to the conductor about cleaning up in here.’
Charlie got up to pump her hand. ‘I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough, Nurse.’
Deborah smiled. ‘Well, I’m still not convinced husbands in delivery rooms are a good idea, but I’d say you have the makings of a fine midwife, Mr Atherton. Congratulations to you both.’
When the nurse had gone, Charlie knelt again by Bobby and the baby.
‘I thought he was bound to be a girl,’ Bobby whispered. ‘We nearly always have girls in my family.’
Charlie ran a tender finger over his new son’s tiny nose. ‘I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life, except perhaps his mother. I’ll tell you what, you can keep your kings. Nothing will ever compare to meeting this little man.’
‘He’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.’
‘I have to say, though, darling, he doesn’t look much like a Marmaduke.’
‘I know what he looks like,’ Bobby said softly.
‘I can guess what you’re going to say. Ernest, after his godfather.’
‘If you approve.’
‘Yes, it suits him.’ Charlie smiled as the baby gripped his finger. ‘He looks a serious little soul. What about a middle name?’
‘I’d like to name him after your brother, if it’s all right with you.’
Charlie laughed. ‘I’d be perfectly happy with that if my brother wasn’t called Reginald.’
‘Well, does he have a middle name?’
‘David, after our grandfather. I could live with David.’
‘Ernest David Atherton.’ Bobby spoke the name slowly, trying out the sound. ‘Yes, I like that.’ She smiled at the wrinkled, beautiful, miraculous, gummy little face that belonged to her and to Charlie. ‘Welcome to the world, Ernie Atherton.’
Epilogue
8th May 1945, VE Day
‘A little higher,’ Bobby said to Topsy as her friend stood on a ladder, attaching Union Flag bunting to the balcony in the ballroom at Sumner House.
‘I’m sure you time your babies on purpose to get out of the difficult jobs, Birdy,’ Topsy called down.
Bobby smiled and rested a hand on her lightly pregnant stomach. ‘If you’d been there during my last baby’s dramatic arrival, you’d know what a jolly difficult job this is.’
‘There.’ Topsy climbed down to examine her handiwork. ‘A little lopsided but I think we’ve made the place suitably festive.’
‘It is perfect,’ said Teddy, who was supervising proceedings from his wheelchair. ‘We will celebrate the end of that terrible war in fine style, as it is right we should.’
Topsy took his hand, and a look of quiet understanding passed between them. Bobby had noticed many such looks since the news had reached them that all of Teddy’s Polish family had been murdered in one of Hitler’s horrific extermination camps. In tenderly supporting her husband through his grief and even more through raising their child, Topsy seemed to have become softer and more thoughtful than she had been before.
Lilian came in, hand in hand with Annie, who beamed on everyone present with all the sunshine in her little soul.
Lil stopped to speak to Florrie and Jess, who were making paper chains on the carpet. Ernie sat between them, patting out a drumbeat on his round two-year-old belly. His awed admirer – Topsy and Teddy’s little girl, Abigail – watched in wonder at the cleverness of his music-making.
‘I don’t want to get you too excited, but I’ve just seen a trifle the size of Blackpool Tower being prepared in the kitchen,’ Lilian told her stepdaughters, the two Parry girls. ‘It’s so high that I could barely see Maimie behind it.’
