"You go with the boys!" panted Lily. "I'll be all right here. It sounds like they're bombing the Docks again. It's miles away! I'll hold on 'til you get back."

"I'm not leaving!" stated Rose. Her tone told Lily not to argue, but Lily tried once again. No need for all of them to be in danger, she thought.

"Look, I'll be all right! You go with Arthur and the boys to the shelter. If it's my time, then it's my time! Now go!"

Rose set herself four square at the end of the bed. Jaw set firm. "Don't be daft. I'm the eldest so you'll do as you're told!" she said. This statement and the inclination of her head was a strategy Rose used to good effect when she wanted to remind Lily that she was the older twin. It was a point Rose brought up from time to time when needed and it rankled with Lily because she was only two minutes younger. But Rose knew it was a powerful weapon. As he came in, Rose yelled to Arthur downstairs, to take the boys to the shelter.

"What about you? Are you coming?"

"Of course I'm not! I'm staying with Lily. She can't make it now; she's too far along. You go. We'll be all right!"

London bombing near St Paul's Cathedral.

The bombing was a little closer now and the searchlights frantically scrabbled across the darkness, seeking targets. The worry for the sisters was not so much that they may be a target in Kingsbury, but of a stray bomb that would accidentally overshoot, or of a pilot releasing unused bombs as the Luftwaffe ran for home.

An hour later, during the height of the bombardment, with the house shaking and the air full of electric tension, the two sisters brought a wee boy into the world. Lily the mother; Rose the aunt. And even though the circumstances weren't the best, he couldn't have asked for two better women to shape his life on March 26, 1943.

A murky wash of smudged sunlight greeted the next morning and misty rain softened the smouldering piles of rubble that once represented family homes. Four houses in a street of 20 were razed to the ground. Lily was oblivious to the rank smell of burnt charcoal held down at ground level by the heavy, clinging fog. Splintered timbers and jigsaws of brick angled from the ruins as mute testimony to the night's bombing raid. She was busy with her newly born son.

"I have decided to call you Stephen," she said to no one in particular. Just happy that he was perfect in all departments. "He's got inventor's hands!" she called to Rose.

"How can you tell?

"I just know. That's all!"

Rose came up the stairs. "You can tell it's your first!" she threw at Lily. "Don't hold him so tight. He'll suffocate. And you don't want to mollycoddle him either." Rose tutted and, feigning exasperation, said, "Here, give him to me!" when all she really wanted was a cuddle. "This is how you hold him, just under your breast and then he can see you at the same time, though you're not much to look at at the moment. Not the best-looking twin this morning are we?" she chuckled.

Lily couldn't see herself in the mirror across the bedroom but she could imagine what she looked like and that was probably worse than seeing. The manageress had told her that hairdresser's models needed to advertise their good looks all the time. She knew Rose didn't mean it but it reminded her of her promise to her husband Fred, that she would always try to look her best


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