She heard a tap on the door and Mrs Hall came in. She expected the landlady to shout at her for still being in bed, but she spoke kindly.

‘Tha’s awake. How dost tha feel?’

‘I don’t know. Sore. What happened?’

‘Dost tha not recall? Tha took too many of Ma Critchley’s little pills,’ Mrs Hall told her. ‘Tha very nearly bled to death and it were only Dr Barlow that saved thee.’ So the man she remembered had been Dr Barlow. ‘Tha’s got thyself in a right mess and now I’m expected to nurse thee an’ all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary. She hated to be a burden to anyone, especially this woman, even if she didn’t sound quite as cross about it as her words implied.

‘Aye. Well. I’ve brought thee a bit of broth. Tha needs to build up thy strength.’

She helped Mary ease herself up on the pillows and then brought the little bentwood chair to the side of the bed so she could sit on it and spoon a little of the warm meal into Mary’s mouth.

‘I’m going to have to get another lass to help in t’ kitchen for a bit,’ she said. ‘Tha’ll not be fit for owt for a week or two yet.’

The warmth of the broth spread through Mary and made her feel a little better. As her mind cleared she began to try to separate what had happened from her dreams. Had Hannah been here? Or had she only imagined her? She wasn’t sure. And she didn’t dare to ask in case it had only been a dream.

Jennet wasn’t one for frequenting the beerhouses. She didn’t like Titus going into them either, although she would never have said so, and at least he only went when there was a Reform meeting. Not like some of the husbands of her neighbours, who were in them every night. She sometimes heard them coming home, shouting and laughing in the street as they made their way to their doors, and she worried that they’d spent all their wages and had nothing left to give their wives to feed the children. Mr Whittaker often spoke out about the scourge of drunkenness in the town when he was preaching on a Sunday. Not that it made any difference. Those who’d been drunk on a Saturday night were too busy nursing their sore heads on a Sunday morning to be in church to hear what he had to say.

She hesitated outside the Star, not really wanting to go in. The door was locked anyway so she knocked gently, then again more forcefully when no one came.

‘We’re shut!’

‘I’ve come about Mary!’ she called.

The door opened and a woman peered out at her. She was of ample proportions with a bosom hiked up above a corset and a double chin that quivered as she eyed Jennet with her small bright eyes.

‘I’m Jennet. Titus Eastwood’s wife. He said Mary were poorly.’