The baker had looked at her; her face was sprinkled with flour. ‘It’s a circle within a circle, isn’t it? That’s what I believe, anyway. You create a circle with your family or friends inside it – it’s a kind of protection, I suppose – then you meet someone like-minded and draw them into that circle and they create another within it and so on. Some say that it’s perfection and that God is in the centre. But it depends what you believe. I think it means complete friendship.’

She had seen Ellen’s astonishment at her lucid explanation and rubbed her hands together until a cloud of flour floated from them. ‘I used to be a teacher,’ she’d explained. ‘Science and mathematics. Then I met my husband and he taught me to bake, so here I am. A baker of bread. A provider of the staff of life.’

Ellen was thinking of her as she packed, and how remarkable people were, with talents you’d never guess at, when Billy knocked on the front door. Sarah ran to open it, thinking it was Filip or Anna, and Ellen heard her excited shriek of ‘Uncle Billy’ and then Mary and Thomas dashed to greet him too.

‘Oh, Billy,’ she said. ‘I never expected you today. It’s moving day! I was going to write again, but what with one thing and another—’

‘Shall I go away again?’ he said with a pretence of misery.

‘No!’ she said. ‘Of course not, but I can’t even offer you a cup o’ tea. Fire’s out, as you see.’

She pointed to the cold grey ash in the grate and got to her feet. ‘Oh, it’s always good to see you, Billy.’ She put her arms round him to give him a hug and saw the children standing looking at someone behind the door.

‘You’ve brought somebody with you,’ she said. ‘Is it Ma? Or Meg?’

‘Nope.’ He grinned. ‘Ma’s busy and so is Meg with her brood; did I tell you she’s had another lad?’

‘No, you didn’t! Are they both all right? So who’s come with you? Polly, come to see Harry?’ She peered round the door and saw a complete stranger, a young and comely woman, with fair hair and smiling blue eyes.

‘This is Florence,’ Billy murmured and Ellen turned to look at him in astonishment. Never to her knowledge had her brother ever brought a young woman home to meet his family. He was, they had always thought, a confirmed bachelor.

‘Come in, Florence.’ She smiled at the young woman, whom she guessed to be about her own age. ‘I’m Ellen. You’ve caught us at an awkward time, I’m afraid, but it’s very nice to meet you.’

She cast a surreptitious glance at Billy; whatever was he thinking of, bringing a young woman all this way from Holderness on her own?