“Yes, I knew that.” Julia was anxious not to intrude. “I only wondered if you’d ever seen Timothy’s mother.”
“No, miss, I only saw the girl who brought him down because London might be bombed. She wasn’t a uniformed nurse and not really safe with him, which was why I took over. I always understood that his Mummy had died in childbirth, but with eighty babies in the house you can understand I was too busy to hear much.”
“So many?” Julia’s dark eyes widened. “Miss Kinnit told me at Christmas about the evacuees. On the first day of the war this house was invaded. It was a sort of clearing station, wasn’t it, for the district? You must have had a time!”
An expression of such intense happiness that it could almost have been called a radiance transfigured Nanny Broome suddenly.
“Oh! It was w
