With a practised hand Millie
wrapped the newborn infant in a warm towel. ‘There we go, young lady, say hello
to your ma.’

She handed the child to the woman
propped up in the bed. Mo Driscoll, already mother to four lively boys, took
the baby.

‘Thank you, Sister,’ she said,
tucking her daughter into the crook of her arm and gazing down at the baby.
‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

‘She’s an angel,’ Mo’s mother,
standing on the other side of the bed, replied. ‘And a welcome change.’ She
looked at Millie. ‘I’ll clear up, Sister. You look done in.’

‘I am, but thankfully it’s my
last night on call.’ Millie handed a parcel of newspaper containing soiled
gauze to the older woman. ‘Could you pop these on the fire?’

‘To be sure.’ She took the
packet and threw it in the zinc bucket alongside the dirty linen. ‘That
superintendent works you nurses too hard. You should try and put your feet up
when you get back.’

Millie smiled. Chance would be
a fine thing.

She plopped her instruments
into the small gallipot half-filled with Dettol, took off her gloves and
glanced at her watch. Eight-thirty a.m.!

Thank goodness. She’d be back by
the time Miss Summers gave out the day’s work. Also, as Annie Fletcher, the
trainee Queen’s Nurse student assigned to Millie, was laid up with tonsillitis,
Millie had given a couple of Annie’s morning insulin injection visits to Gladys
to do, and she wanted to make sure she’d done them.

‘Do you know what you’re going
to call her?’ Millie asked Mo, washing her hands in the bowl balanced on the
rickety bedside table.

Mother and daughter exchanged
an affectionate look and Mille glanced at her watch again.

She ought to get on, as she’d
promised her own mum that she’d pop home in time for Churchill’s announcement
at three p.m.

Her parents, Doris and Arthur,
only lived a short bus ride away in Bow but, as Millie had two newborns to
check plus a handful of pregnant women to see before she swapped her midwifery

bag for her district one for her afternoon visits, it would be a close-run
thing.

Millie packed the four small
enamel dressing-bowls inside each other, then stowed them in her case between
her scissors and the bottle of Dettol. She snapped the clasp shut.

‘I’ll call back tomorrow, but
if there’s any problem just ring Munroe House to get the on-call nurse,’ Millie
said, squeezing down the side of the bed towards the door.

Like so many others in East London, the Driscolls’ home was just the two
downstairs rooms in an old terraced house that Hitler’s bombs had somehow
missed.

Colleen took the manila
envelope tucked into side of the dressing table mirror and passed it to Millie.
She opened it and took out two crumpled ten-shilling notes, popping them into
the side pocket of her bag.

‘Thank you’ said Millie. ‘I’ll mark it in
when I get back to the clinic.’