She checked the soup; it was nowhere near ready. The vegetables were still hard. The children would have to eat bread and jam for their midday meal. She’d give them it now, she thought, and they could have it with the cocoa, but she’d have to take the soup off the flames to boil the kettle. She sighed as she added small pieces of coal to the fire and put the kettle back on top. How she missed her kitchen range, for its warmth as much as for the cooking artefacts: the kettle hook, the spit rack for roasting meat, and the side oven. She hadn’t realized just how lucky she had been.

When the kettle had boiled she made the children’s cocoa and gave them a thick slice of bread with jam, and when they had eaten she encouraged Thomas into bed, wrapped in a blanket to keep warm. She gave him the building bricks that Harry had made for him, smoothing the edges so that he didn’t get splinters in his fingers, and he played happily with them until, tired after the walk or just bored with his game, he put his head on the pillow and went to sleep.

Sarah played with her rag doll, tucking it up in bed next to Thomas and talking to it in a quiet voice. She was just telling it to be good and it would be rewarded with something nice when Ellen, knitting vests by the fire, heard a gentle tapping.

She put down her needles and wool and opened the door. It was Edith Johnson.

‘Hello,’ Ellen greeted her, noticing that the woman’s face was flushed and her eyes were red. She wondered why she wasn’t at work. Perhaps she was ill; she didn’t look well.

‘Won’t you come in?’ she said. ‘The heat …’ indicating that it was escaping through the open door.

‘Sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Miss Johnson hovered at the edge of the door. ‘I wondered if your friend was still here.’

‘Please come in,’ Ellen insisted. ‘It’s very cold.’

‘Sorry,’ Edith said again, stepping inside. ‘It is warm in here, warmer than in our room.’

‘Yes. Please come and sit by the fire. Yours is a small grate.’

Edith sat gingerly on the edge of the chair. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. Your friend …’

‘Anna Bosco.’ Ellen helped her out. ‘They moved to another house only this morning.’

‘Oh!’ The woman seemed distressed. ‘I was hoping to talk to her – to ask her opinion.’

‘I can tell you where they’ve gone to live.’

‘Her husband will be at home, perhaps?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, mebbe. They’re making ’house comfortable.’