‘If it had been up to me I’d have been soft and let her stay,’ said Jennet after he’d gone. ‘But Titus is right. We can’t afford to keep folk who aren’t family.’

‘She would have worked and paid her way.’

‘Aye, she would have been willing to work, I know that. But work’s still not that easy to come by,’ said Jennet. ‘Mills have taken some workers back on but it isn’t like it was when we first came. Trade’s still poor, and if we’d let her stay it would have been even harder to ask her to go. I’m sure she’ll find somewhere. And she does have a home of her own.’

‘Aye, but she’ll not go there. She told me stuff whilst we were away – about her father. Bad stuff,’ said Hannah.

‘I can’t say as I’m surprised,’ replied Jennet as she began to fold the washing she’d taken down from the rack. ‘Folk think that what goes on behind closed doors is private, but nowt’s private when tha lives cheek by jowl wi’ folk like we do in this town. He’s a bad lot is that Joe, and Nan’s no better. I’d hoped that Mary might make summat of herself once she got away from them. It’s a cryin’ shame tha’s had to come back.’

Chapter Two

Mary walked out of the house on Water Street with her head held high. She didn’t even bother to slam the door behind her. She was angry, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to live there anyway. Jennet was all right and she felt sorry about the trouble that her parents had caused her. But she didn’t like Titus.

She paused as she reached the corner of King Street. It would take her down to Paradise Lane and she was tempted to go and have a look. There would be nobody in at this time of the day. She found herself walking down the hill without having made any conscious decision. It was as if her feet were leading her home, except that it wasn’t her home any more.

The row of cottages facing the mill wall looked just the same. She walked down to number eight and pressed her face up to the window. The chairs were pushed back from the table where her family had left in a hurry to go back to work after their dinner. The fire was banked up ready to be rekindled into a blaze when they got home, and her father’s chair was still by the hearth with the same cushion on the seat, flattened from use. She no longer had a key and when she tried the door it was locked against her. It was futile anyway, she thought. Her father hadn’t wanted her to leave and it had taken all her courage to face him and say that she was going to work for the Sudells. And it had been such a relief to get away and be free of him. She could never go back.