She must know some obstetrics. The only way to get the piglet out if it was firmly wedged was to push it back and turn it.

Was she a vet-in those stilettos?

And then he felt the piglet give-a minuscule amount but he felt the girl’s body jerk forward and she gave a gasp of sheer relief.

‘Turn, damn you. Turn,’ she muttered, as her own body changed position. ‘Please…’

Her shoulder twisted and her face screwed up. The crimson lipstick looked almost surrealistic.

And then her shoulder twisted still more. She gave a grunt of surprise and pain. The sow’s body contracted in one huge mass of muscle and the girl’s arm came sliding out.

Her hand was grasping one dead piglet.

The piglet slid limply onto the straw. The girl shoved it away as if it was of no importance-as indeed it wasn’t-and then she shoved her hand into the soapy water and moved again to reinsert it.

It wasn’t needed.

The contraction didn’t ease. It became a rolling crescendo of muscle power, and another piglet slid out onto the straw. This one was alive.

It was followed by another.

It was as if a cork had been pulled from a champagne bottle. Doris’s exhausted body heaved with every ounce of energy she had left, and minutes later the girl was in the middle of a squirming, bloody mass of living piglets.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight live piglets.

Mike was so stunned he could hardly count, but Doris knew. As the last of the piglets was expelled from her body, the massive sow moved her head around to see what she’d finally produced.

The girl looked up into the sow’s face and grinned-heavens, what a grin! She tried to lift one of the piglets around to its mother.

Her arm didn’t work. She gave a whimper of pain and the piglet fell back onto the straw.