Madge Arwell

Madge Arwell is a wartime mother holding her household together while her husband flies dangerous missions abroad. One evening she finds a strange man in a motorcycle helmet collapsed on her lawn, and without much fuss takes him in, keeps his secret, and gets on with preparing a proper Christmas for her children.

Claire Skinner plays her with brisk, unfussy competence rather than wide-eyed wonder, so the joke and the ache both land: here is the one adult in the story who refuses to be astonished by anything, because astonishment is a luxury she can't currently afford. That steadiness is what makes her, quietly, the most remarkable person in the room.