‘Aye. Come in,’ said the woman.

‘How is she?’ asked Jennet, stepping inside and glancing around the neat parlour, trying to imagine what it would be like when Titus and his friends were here. It seemed clean, at least, she noted, and the smell of cooking from the back kitchen was appetising.

‘Dr Barlow says he thinks she’ll pull through. But she’s lost a lot of blood,’ confided the woman. ‘Dost tha want to see her?’

‘Just for a minute.’

Mrs Hall led the way up the steep stairs to the attic and tapped on a door. ‘Visitor for thee.’

She stepped aside and Jennet went in. Mary was lying in bed. She was white and barely seemed aware.

‘Mary? It’s Jennet. Hannah’s sister.’

There was a chair and she moved it to the side of the bed and sat down. She reached out for Mary’s hand. It was icy cold.

‘What did she do?’ she asked Mrs Hall, who had stayed in the doorway.

‘She took too many of Ma Critchley’s pills. They should have been safe. Lots of women use ’em.’

Jennet didn’t comment. She glanced around the little room and saw the sponge on a ribbon on the washstand. She didn’t ask about that either, but she wished with all her heart that she’d tried harder to persuade Titus to let Mary stay with them.

‘Is there owt she needs?’ Jennet asked Mrs Hall. ‘Has she got money to pay for the doctor?’

‘It’s been paid,’ she told her. ‘And money for her to be nursed until she’s better.’

Jennet nodded. ‘I’ll come again,’ she said to Mary, although she wasn’t sure if she could hear her. ‘Tha’ll take good care of her?’ she asked Mrs Hall when they got back downstairs.

‘Aye. I’ll look after her,’ she assured her. ‘She’s a good lass. Did tha say Hannah were thy sister?’

‘Aye. Does she come in often?’ Jennet didn’t like to think of her younger sister in the beerhouse even if she was only visiting her friend.

‘She sometimes comes when it’s Reform night. Not always though. She’s not a mill lass, is she?’

‘No. She’s in service. With the Feildens on King Street.’

‘Aye. She were lucky. Mary were a bit put out about it,’ Mrs Hall told her. ‘She’d have liked to get back into service.’

Jennet reached out for the door as it was pushed open from the outside and a tall, lanky man ducked in.

‘I’m not open,’ Mrs Hall told him.

‘I’ve only called to ask about Mary.’

Jennet looked at him again as she went out, wondering if he was one of Mary’s admirers. She really ought to find a way to get the lass out of there once she was better.

Chapter Eighteen

Cook hadn’t spoken to Hannah since her room had been searched except to give her curt instructions about what needed to be done. Hannah was glad. She didn’t want to talk about it and the sight of the browned and curled edges of her work on the kitchen fire had reduced her to a state of such sobbing that she’d thought it would never stop.