‘Ma will look after her,’ he assured her. ‘She’s got a good fire to keep her warm and she’ll onny let her outside if ’weather’s all right.’

‘I know.’ She was choked. ‘I know.’ She took a breath. ‘We’re lucky, aren’t we, wi’ a family to support us?’

‘Aye, we are.’ He decided that this wasn’t the time to tell her of his own future plans, and he hoped that Harry wouldn’t tell her either.

The Boscos ate with them; they shared the chicken, which they ate with potatoes cooked over the coals, and Filip said humbly, ‘One day we will return the great favours you have given us. One day if I make my fortune you will be the first to share it.’

Ellen smiled and wondered if this was the fortune that Billy had said she would one day gain; but I have good fortune now, she thought.

As they sat at the table they could hear raised voices upstairs in Mrs Johnson’s room. One a male voice, undoubtedly, and another which could only have been Mrs Johnson’s daughter, and both were speaking in anger.

Filip lifted his head, listening. ‘She is refusing to do something,’ he murmured, ‘and her brother is insisting. Tch. That is not good when private conversations are shared by others.’

‘Mebbe we should sing – loudly,’ Harry said mischievously. ‘Come on, Sarah, Zophia, Jakub, lah lah, lah la la!’

The children began to sing in high excited voices, with Thomas and Aron banging on the table with spoons, until the grown-ups hushed them.

‘We’re carol singing.’ Sarah bounced up and down on her seat. ‘Can we do that, Da? Can we go carol singing at Christmas? Zophia, will you come as well?’

‘Yes, yes!’ Zophia squealed and asked her mother something incomprehensible to everyone but her parents, but they both smiled and shook their heads and Filip gently patted her cheek.

‘It’s too soon,’ Ellen told her daughter, and got up from the table. ‘It’s not Christmas yet for ages. Come on now, children, it’s almost bedtime. Let’s see who can be ’first into bed, and whoever is can choose a bedtime story.’

Sarah and Zophia quickly began to undo their buttons and take off their socks and dresses; Jakub dived into a bed with all of his clothes on and covered himself with a blanket. Thomas climbed in after him, followed by Aron, and soon they were all hidden beneath the blanket and giggling.

The adults laughed, and then Filip said quietly, ‘Well done, Ellen. No religious dissension in this household.’

‘No,’ Ellen responded. ‘And I hope there never will be.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Anna and Filip left the children overnight and went to prepare their new rooms, unpack their few belongings and light a fire.