She closed the file she had been working on and stood up, saying, ‘There’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow, Mr Tannerson, and I’ll come in early to do it. And would it be beyond ’bounds of etiquette for you to call me Lizzie in private? I’m recently widowed, it’s true, but in ’district where I’m from widows have to carry on with their everyday lives and can’t hide away with their sorrow, as I believe some in society do; life is short, as we’ve discovered.’ She licked her lips. ‘And I could devour a meat pie with no trouble at all.’

He laughed, his mood lifting. He took her coat down from the peg and helped her on with it. ‘Right then, Lizzie. Let’s go, and when we’ve eaten we can discuss the organizing of a new work force, as you suggest. Then perhaps we can talk about the matter of compensation to the men for loss of earnings.’

‘Very good sir,’ Lizzie leaned across her desk and picked up her notebook and pencil and put them in her bag. ‘I’m ready when you are.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Lizzie had felt a sense of freedom since coming to Hull. Her mother had suggested that she come to assist Ellen after the mill fire, hoping that the need to support her sister might pull her out of the melancholia that had overwhelmed her since her husband’s death.

But I’m a fraud and no one knows it, Lizzie thought as she walked back to Ellen’s house after eating a good dinner with Roland Tannerson. I need to talk it out, she decided, and although Ellen has worries of her own, I know she’ll listen; and that’s all I need, a good listener.

She didn’t want anything to eat, she told Ellen, even though the vegetable soup smelled good; she was always astounded at how Ellen could rustle up something nourishing in one pan on a small fire. Ellen was full of the news of Mrs Lucan’s calling again to discuss the cottage; she sang her praises and told Lizzie she’d said they could definitely move in at the end of the following week.

‘She says they’ll make sure that ’cottage is fit for us to move into. My goodness – if she’d seen this place when we first came, before Billy arrived with a pot of paint and a paint brush! But she said she understood, for it had been ’same for her family when they first moved to Hull and took over an old inn.’

‘Not a toff, then?’ Lizzie said. ‘Did she marry money?’

‘Don’t know.’ Ellen shook her head. ‘But I’d guess there’s a story there.’