‘That’s about it,’ he said. ‘I always intended going back but somehow I never did. Got a nice little business going here, although it’s lonely sometimes without my wife, and I can’t leave her all alone in that pretty cemetery, can I?’

‘No, you can’t,’ she agreed. ‘And your old country wouldn’t be ’same as you remember it in any case, would it?’

He shook his head and gave a rueful laugh. ‘It wouldn’t, you’re right, but the weather would still be warmer than it is here, that I do know!’

‘Did you find out about your ancestors or where they lived, Mr Foster?’ she asked him, having seen his name – M. W. Foster – on the board above the shop window.

‘I found out where they had lived in Hull – it was a poor place, so I guess they’d had a hard time making ends meet – but then the trail went cold; it seemed they’d left to live elsewhere. It was disappointing, but then I gave up; I was trying to run a business and then Maggie took ill so it didn’t seem important anymore.’ He sighed. ‘It would have been good if I’d found some living folk who’d come from the same roots, you know, but it wasn’t meant to be.’

‘I suppose not.’ He seemed sad, and she was sorry that she’d brought up some unhappy memories by her question. ‘Not meant to be,’ she said gently, ‘but a pity nevertheless.’

Mr Tannerson sent a message with Lizzie to say the boys’ funeral had been arranged and he would collect Ellen from the end of Queen’s Road so she wouldn’t have to tell Harry where she was going. She put a dark shawl in her bag to slip over her head once she reached St Mary’s church.

As they drove the short distance, Tannerson told her that his enquiry at the workhouse had revealed that the boy Benny Dent had been born there. His mother had died at his birth, and he had spent the whole of his short life there until Jim Smith had befriended him and they had become as close as brothers. When Jim had left to work in the mill, Benny had run away.

He also told her that at the inquest he had been reprimanded for allowing unsuitable persons to supervise access to a dangerous environment and had been heavily fined. Kirkwood and some of the other men had spoken up in his defence, saying that he had always been a good and considerate employer, and offering the suggestion that the fault might lie elsewhere.

‘But ultimately it was my fault,’ he said regretfully, ‘and I accept that. The death of those boys will be always on my conscience; I left someone in charge who was totally unfitted for a position of trust.’