When the three Kings met a refugee family welcoming

to deliver a welcome pack to a Syrian family.”

Mel looked appalled. “You have done what?”

“We need to take some food and toiletries. Come on, Mum. It’ll be fun.”

Mel rolled her eyes. Her idea of fun was an extra-long yoga class or finding a new food group to be intolerant of.

Balthasar appealed to his father. “Dad. The roads will be quiet. You can fiddle about with that iPad thing in your new car and play your old people’s music really loud.”

He did the impression of Puss from Shrek that had melted his parents’ hearts when he was four. “Please.”

Mel made a noise halfway between a sigh and a growl. She was already packing a Waitrose bag with tins and packets.

“Do you think they eat gluten?” aya’s contractions were getting stronger. Joram did not know what to do. The phone in the hall had a forbidding lock on it. His mobile phone charger had snapped – and, anyway, he had no idea who to call.

He had searched The Stables for the kind of calm, motherly lady who took charge of childbirth at home in Homs. The only women he could find were surely too young to know about babies. He struggled to speak to them over the incessant crashing noise coming from a mobile phone in the middle of a cramped bedroom where seven or eight other residents were holding some kind of gathering.

He mimed to two of them that his wife was giving birth. The sequins on their tiny garments – some kind of underwear? – flashed and gleamed. He looked at their long curved fingernails decorated with what looked like fish scales and shuddered to think of them near a tiny infant.

They answered in the same language he had heard on the stairs.

Joram gave up trying and ran back upstairs. Maya must be terrified. She was alone in a grubby little room, lying on greying sheets, staring up at a brown splodge of damp on the ceiling, listening to barely muffled thumps and mysterious shouts from the room below.

Every few seconds, her body convulsed with another contraction. She didn’t know whether to cry, push, shout for Joram or pull the pillow over her head.

As he opened the door, a slimy head began to appear. he Kings heard The Stables before they could see it. Gaz was relieved he had gone for the top-of-the-range navigation gizmo because he had never been to this part of the east end before and needed all the help he could get.

Balthasar nodded approvingly. “Tune.”

Mel, who tried to take an interest