But poor Jane wasn’t having an easy time of it either, she thought as she hurried up the steps again with the salads. Eddie had taken sick and couldn’t work so Cook was sending her food parcels to tide her over the worst of it until he got better.

‘Be quick,’ hissed Horrocks when he glanced in as he passed. ‘I’m ready to announce supper and the table’s still half empty.’

‘There’s only so much we can do,’ panted Cook as she came up with the pie. ‘Run down and bring up the soup tureen instead of standing there going on, and then tha can bring ’em through.’

Hannah had barely placed the last dish and slipped out of the dining room when the guests began to enter. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a familiar face and her heart raced. James Hindle, the schoolmaster, was here. He was chatting away to the lady he was escorting into supper and he looked just as fine as any of the gentry who were present. Hannah wondered why he’d been invited. He didn’t have a vote so couldn’t influence the election. Perhaps he’d been asked because he was a Reformer – a gesture to the working classes. He certainly made a more suitable guest than Titus would have done, she thought as she went back to the kitchen. Titus would probably have banged on the table and lectured them loud and long about the errors of their ways.

The party went on until late and it was the early hours before the last guests went off in their carriages and they finally got to bed, but Hannah was up at her usual time to help Cook clear the table and to dust and tidy the house ready for Mrs Feilden when she eventually rang for Hannah to help her to dress.

When Hannah got back to the kitchen Cook was packing a basket with some of the leftover food from the previous day.

‘It’s for Jane,’ she told her. ‘Will tha go? My back aches and I’m that tired today I could do with a sit-down. It’s only on Clayton Street. Just across the way.’

‘Aye. I’ll take it,’ said Hannah as she watched Cook fold a clean cotton cloth over the contents.

‘Don’t linger,’ warned Cook. ‘We don’t want thee catchin’ owt.’

Hannah put on her jacket and bonnet and let herself out of the gate. There’d still been no rain and as she crossed King Street dust blew up around her from the wheels of the wagons and carriages and clung to her skirt. It wasn’t far to Clayton Street, although the small terraced cottages there had little in common with the Feildens’ house. They stretched in a long row, all the same, each with a front door and one window upstairs and one down. It looked dreary in the heat. There was nothing green here and Hannah longed for the wide expanse of fields and parkland that had stretched around Woodfold Hall. She missed the scent of herbs growing in the garden, fresh vegetables and the aroma that rose from the ground after a longed-for rain shower. When it rained here in Blackburn, it just made the stench worse.