He had opened his eyes and watched her, smiling a little, and as she sat on the edge of the narrow empty bed and began to unpin her plaits, which were fastened on top of her head, he rose from the chair and went towards her. He put out his hand and said softly, ‘Let me do that,’ and sat beside her.

Gently he unfastened the metal clips to let loose the braids, and kissed the back of her neck. ‘She looked so sweet from her two bare feet,’ he whispered the words from the old song, and slowly began to undo the plaits, ‘to the sheen of her nut-brown hair.’

She closed her eyes as he nuzzled into the smooth concave beneath her throat with the tip of his tongue and he felt the throb of her pulse as he explored her skin, her cheek, her eyelids, her earlobes.

Ellen’s lips parted as she lifted her face to take his kiss and he murmured, ‘You know how much I love you?’

She nodded and said softly, ‘As much as I love you?’

Thomas, squashed between his sisters, mumbled something and turned over, but didn’t waken, and as Harry began to undress Ellen slipped into the bed which tonight only she and Harry would share.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Anna was taken on as an assistant at the baker’s and after a few days, once she had proved that she could bake good bread, she was offered regular employment. Then word got around that she was Polish and the baker, Mrs Brownlee, asked her to make rye bread and pinned up a notice in her window to say it was available to order. Soon other immigrants were arriving and not only giving a weekly order for bread, but introducing themselves to Anna who then found that she was mixing with people who understood her language or spoke Yiddish and could give her advice about living in the town.

‘But always I will speak English,’ she said to Ellen. ‘This is now my country.’

Filip obtained work at Tannerson’s mill and was then recommended to another factory. ‘You are a good man,’ he told Harry. ‘It was meant that we should meet. That day when you gave me shilling, you gave me hope.’

During October Ellen wrote to her mother and to Harry’s sister Meg to ask how everyone was and to say how sorry they were that they wouldn’t see them at Christmas.

It’s too far to come, she wrote, especially if the weather is bad. Neither do I think the carrier would bring us all.

A postcard from Ellen’s mother came back immediately to say that Billy would come the following weekend with a live chicken and a bag of corn so she could feed it up ready for Christmas, and that she had also made a plum pudding and a Christmas cake, knowing that Ellen didn’t have an oven.