Now a very different future beckoned. There was no point going home to her parents at Ramsgreave. There was no work for her there and she needed to earn her keep. So, if there was no chance of another position as a maid, she supposed that she would have to go to her sister, Jennet, and her brother-in-law, Titus, and ask if they would take her back as a boarder. Then she would have to go to the mill and try to get her job back. It wasn’t what she wanted, and she silently damned Henry Sudell for having ruined her life.

When they reached the end of the drive, the bailiff pulled the tall iron gates closed behind them and began to secure them with heavy chains.

‘That’s it then,’ said Mary. ‘I suppose we’d better start walking.’

‘Where will tha go?’ asked Hannah as they took the lane that led down the hill towards the Preston to Blackburn road. ‘I could ask our Jennet and Titus if they’d take thee in. They don’t live on Paradise Lane any more,’ she added, knowing that Mary wouldn’t want to live next door to her own family. ‘They moved on soon after I left.’

‘I don’t blame them,’ said Mary. ‘I wouldn’t want to live next door to my father either after what happened. Where are they now?’

‘On Water Street, next to the river. Come home with me for today at least,’ said Hannah. ‘I’m sure tha’ll be welcome to stay for a night or two until tha finds summat else.’

She tried to sound hopeful and positive, but the truth was that she wasn’t entirely sure of her own welcome. Things had been difficult before she left. When Titus was in prison and it had been just her and Jennet and little Peggy, things had been all right. They’d struggled, of course, but they’d managed. But when Titus had come home and found Jennet pregnant with another man’s child, he’d been upset and difficult and they’d done nothing but argue. In a way she couldn’t blame him. It must have been hard for him and it hadn’t been entirely his own fault that he’d been sent to the House of Correction in Preston – or so he said. His story was that he’d been to a Reform meeting on the moor and got caught up with some loom breakers afterwards and been arrested. He’d been lucky not to be transported and it was when Jennet thought she would never see him again that she’d slept with George. She was going to go to America with him, but when Titus got the prison sentence instead of being shipped off to Australia she’d decided to wait for him and George went on his own. It was only after George had gone that she found out she was having his child. She’d expected Titus to understand and forgive her, and he had in the end, but even Hannah could see that the love they’d once had for one another had taken a harsh blow. And so she’d left them to themselves, to try to mend their marriage, and now she had no idea what sort of reception she’d receive when she turned up unannounced on their doorstep.