Harry, being careful with finances, bought an old trap with his compensation money and asked Karl Kidman if he would make it serviceable for him, which he did; he then asked Roland Tannerson if he would let him have the use of Nellie, and in return he’d exercise the other horses every evening. Tannerson was feeding them himself, but no one was exercising them regularly. There was a field at the top of Queen’s Road, just off Mucky Peg Lane, and Harry had enquired if he might be allowed to graze a docile old mare on it. There was a shack there too where she could shelter and room enough to secure the trap.

‘Look at you,’ Ellen wryly joked one day when he arrived back from his session at the other mill. ‘Proper gentleman of means.’

‘With my second-hand cart and old nag I certainly am.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve had such an interesting day, Ellen. We’ve talked about ductwork and valves and prevention of dust explosions; and aerating grain heaps to prevent self-heating …’

‘Which you knew already!’ Ellen interrupted.

‘I did,’ he agreed. ‘But out in ’fields you can smell it and see ’smoke rising. It’s quite different in a factory environment.’

‘I’m so glad that you’re happy.’ She gave him a gentle squeeze. ‘Who’d have thought that something good would come out of such a terrible disaster?’

‘I know,’ he said seriously. ‘Those poor young lads. I think about them every day, Ellen, and I was wondering – well, it’s not up to me. I’m onny an employee after all, but …’

‘What?’ She was about to set the table for their meal, but she stopped what she was doing. ‘Say it!’

‘Well, you know ’other day when you said about Filip offering that young Robbie an apprenticeship? I know you were onny joking, but it set me thinking, and – Ellen, do you think that Roland Tannerson would consider offering an apprenticeship to a young lad from ’workhouse in ’name of the two lads who died?’

Ellen’s eyes were moist as she stood with the tablecloth in her hands. ‘Oh, Harry,’ she breathed. ‘That’s ’nicest thought anybody could have. It’d be a memorial to them, wouldn’t it?’

And not only that, she thought, but it might ease the lingering guilt that still plagued not only Harry, but Roland Tannerson too, and probably some of the men who had known Jim Smith and had not cared enough to worry that there was another boy in a place where he shouldn’t have been. ‘You’ll ask him, won’t you?’

Harry saw the profound relief in Roland Tannerson’s expression when he made the suggestion: a palpable deliverance from guilt and an assurance that he could make amends. ‘What—’ Tannerson swallowed. ‘What a magnificent idea, Harry.’