‘I’ll know to make twice as many next time I come,’ she said as they waved goodbye and climbed into the wagon, ‘and I see there’ll be another mouth to feed.’ She glanced at Anna’s thickening waist line and smiled. ‘But that one won’t be eating sweets for a while.’

Just as Filip hadn’t understood Ellen’s father, neither did Anna fully understand Mrs Snowden’s Holderness accent, but she nodded as if she did and patted her midriff. ‘I will have English baby when I see you again, yes? If it is boy we will call him Albert and if a girl she will be Rose Victoria, like English rose and Queen Victoria.’

They pulled up outside Bill Foster’s shop, which was closed today, being a Sunday, and Ellen went to the door to rap on it. She looked up to the upstairs window and Bill Foster appeared, waved, and disappeared again. They waited a moment and presently the door was unlocked and opened.

‘Mr Foster – Bill,’ Ellen said. ‘Should I not have a key to your yard, and then I wouldn’t disturb you?’ It was the first time she had seen him without his beige overall covering his clothes, and over his cord trousers he wore a pale blue wool jumper which suited his sandy hair.

She introduced him to her mother and father, Billy and Florence and he put out his hand to each of them in turn.

‘Mrs Snowden and Mr Snowden? G’day to you both. Won’t you come along in? Brother Billy? How are you, mate, and is this your young lady? Nice to meet you, miss.’

Ellen’s father had kept his eyes on Bill Foster since he’d shaken his hand, and during a pause in the conversation in the bakery kitchen he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and whispered, ‘I don’t know what you think, Sarah, but yon chap is ’very spit of your brother George.’

‘He is.’ Mrs Snowden’s voice was husky. ‘I saw ’likeness straight away. He could be him come back to ’land of ’living.’

She brought out her handkerchief again and blew her nose. ‘My eldest brother,’ she explained, ‘and a family name.’