‘They had this big wheel’, he told her, ‘that raised the water from the well. It takes four or five men walking on it to make it turn. They called it a treadmill. We were made to walk on it for hours a day.’ He stared at his hand, the one that he’d caught in the mule at the mill. Although the surgeon had saved the fingers, they weren’t much use to him. He could barely move them and so struggled to do any fine work. He would never be a spinner like their father. ‘They wouldn’t teach me weaving. Said there were no point to it. They did teach me to read a bit, though, and add up. I managed to hold a pen in my other hand even though it were frowned upon.’

‘And what now?’ she asked. ‘What work is there tha can do?’ She was about to tell him that he mustn’t go back to thieving again, but she held her tongue. If that Sam Proctor hadn’t come to live next door with Titus and Jennet Eastwood he would never have been persuaded into it in the first place. But with his damaged hand and no work, she could understand that the temptation of acting as a distraction whilst Sam picked the pockets of the gentry had been too much for him to resist.

‘I’m doin’ a bit at the stable yard on Thunder Alley, but it’s only when they need me,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m finished for today. I were hopin’ to get summat where I could use my numbers. They said I were quite good at it, but folk know me in this town. They know I’ve been in prison and they’ll not risk giving me employment in their offices – especially not when I’d be handling their cash.’

Mary nodded. She could see that it was going to be hard for him.

‘Dost tha know what happened to Sam?’ he asked her. ‘Mam and Dad’ll not speak about it. Did he get … tha knows …’

‘Hanged? No.’

‘Transported then?’

She shook her head. ‘He got clean away,’ she told her brother. ‘They never caught him.’

‘How did he manage that?’

‘It were summat to do with Titus Eastwood. He spirited him off somehow, though nobody knows how. Mam were that angry it were just thee that took the blame she vowed she’d get her own back on him and Jennet. That’s why they moved from next door. They’re on Water Street now.’

‘What’s tha doing here anyway?’ he asked. ‘They said tha’d gone away with Hannah Chadwick.’

‘I did,’ she said and told him about the Sudells.

‘So will tha not stop here now?’ He sounded hopeful but she disappointed him.

‘No. I must be gone afore they get home. I’ve to find lodgings somewhere. I can’t live here.’ She didn’t tell him why not.

‘But I’ll see thee again?’ he asked.

‘Of course! I’ll not lose thee a second time,’ she told him.