‘I’ve got another idea.’ Harry took Mary from her and walked about with her, gently patting her back. ‘Why don’t I tek her to your ma’s tomorrow when Billy comes? Good country air, and your ma allus has a good fire so she’ll be right as rain in no time.’

Ellen’s face was consumed with misery. ‘I can’t even look after my own child,’ she muttered, almost in tears.

‘Now, don’t tek on,’ Harry said calmly. ‘It’s very damp here by ’river and she had a chesty cough when we first came. It’s not anybody’s fault, except mebbe mine for bringing you here in ’first place.’

So then Ellen protested that he had had no option and conceded that a day or two of country air would benefit Mary, and her mother would be pleased to have her. She was an easy child, not one to get into mischief, and she wouldn’t be a bother at all.

Saturday afternoon, Billy arrived promptly, and without stopping even to have a cup of tea he said they should be off. Ellen dressed Mary in her warmest clothes with a woolly hat and a blanket to wrap round her; she sat on her father’s knee next to Billy as he took the reins and waved to Sarah and Thomas, who tried to clamber in after her, and put her face towards her mother for a kiss.

‘Be a good girl for Granny, Mary, and we’ll see you soon.’ Ellen was choked as she waved goodbye, and as tears ran down her cheeks she wasn’t consoled in the least by the fact that Mary seemed quite cheerful as they pulled away.

She put more wood on the fire and placed a pan of soup on it to cook for the evening meal, and then sat down to mend a hole in Harry’s thick work socks. Thomas climbed up on to one of the beds and then slid on to the other one, happy with a game of his own devising, and Sarah came and wrapped her arm round her mother’s neck.

‘Are you sad?’ she murmured. ‘Is Mary coming back?’

‘Yes, of course she is. She’s only going to be away for a few days.’ But even as she spoke, Ellen knew that if Harry didn’t bring her back with him the following day there was no saying when they would see her again. It wasn’t fair to keep imposing on Billy; he was a good-hearted man, always had been, but it wasn’t right to keep asking favours of him.

‘I’m missing her,’ Sarah said, and then pressed her little hand on her mother’s abdomen and bent down to put her ear on it.

Ellen laughed. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m listening to the new baby,’ she said. ‘When he comes, can we call him William?’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN