“Well, there you are then,” said Ruby. “You said you were a terrible mother. Do you remember? We sat here, right here, and you said they were better off without you. I knew at the time that no woman could possibly say that without reason, and I knew you weren’t – I could see it in your eyes, the effort, the distress, I mean, that must have made you leave them. He did that to you. You didn’t begin that way, did you? No one begins broken. He broke you. Of course you walked out. If it comes to it I’m happy to say how terribly ill you were, what a simply frightful state you were in.”

I’d rather you didn’t, thought Enid.

“He trampled you to pieces and now he’s robbing you of your children.”

“I walked out, Ruby,” Enid said again.

“And he’s been with this woman, this—”

“Wormald. Her name’s Miss Wormald.”

“Does he mean to marry her?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“But then she’ll have your children.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Another woman being mother in her place. “They’ll always be mine.” Let’s see how she liked it.

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care. I don’t see what choice I have. It wasn’t him who left them.”

“Any woman would have done the same.”

“Would they? Then why aren’t there thousands, hundreds of thousands of women running for the doors of their houses? Why do I know of no other woman who hasn’t been able to stand it?”

“Mrs. Pratt,” said Ruby.

“I don’t know Mrs. Pratt,” snapped Enid. “Look, I’m just being realistic. It’s a pretty black mark, whichever way you look at it.” She could have the best of both worlds.

“But you’re their mother.” Ruby leant on the word as if she knew what it meant.

There was the light, swinging like a beam from a lighthouse, her fear the jagged rocks in an ocean she’d drowned in once before. If she lived in a sweet little cottage nearby, with trees and a stream, she’d be free of the daily chance of pain – no guilt that she hadn’t kissed Finetta goodnight, no heart-stopping trips on the stairs or bandaged heads. But no normal mother could want that. “I don’t see what I can do.”

“You have a right to them,” said Ruby.