Ellen gazed at her. She remembered an incident in their village when a young woman whose parents were churchgoers and a young man whose family were Methodists wanted to marry, and both families objected. The couple were both too young to wed without permission, so they ran away together. She recalled the whispers that spread through the village, when living in sin was whispered behind cupped hands, and schoolgirls such as herself wondered what it meant.

She had seen the couple years later, laughing together and holding hands, married with two children, and had wondered what all the fuss had been about. But Edyta was surely old enough to make a decision for herself, or were there family ties and traditions that forbade it?

‘Are you not old enough to decide for yourself?’ she asked. ‘Or must you rely on your brother to keep you until you marry?’

Edith Johnson stared at her. ‘My brother pays the rent for our room, which is in his name. I work to buy food and coal. Everyone must work in this new country, as we did in Prussia.’

She hesitated for a moment, and then went on. ‘I met Karl on the journey from Hamburg. For him there is no difficulty. He is Prussian, but unlike many of his fellow countrymen he does not hate our race. He has left his country because he does not like their politics; he thinks that all people should choose their own destiny, their own religion.’

Ellen nodded. And why not? It’s called freedom, she thought, but did not say. ‘And do you believe that?’ she asked.

Edith hesitated. Then she answered in a mere whisper. ‘No one has ever asked my opinion. When I told my brother I loved Karl and he had asked me to marry him he was angry with me; he said that they would disown me and that I’d never see my mother again.’ She cleared her throat. ‘But my mother says that isn’t true, that I will always have a place in her heart, but now she says I must decide; she is getting old and tired.’

She leaned forward, her head cupped in her hands. ‘She is imprisoned in that upstairs room. She hasn’t been outside for so long; she has only breathed stale air and I am afraid for her. I am afraid that I will be the cause of her death.’

Ellen lifted the kettle on to the fire. ‘Then you must decide,’ she said resolutely. ‘Does your mother object to your marriage to Karl?’

‘She wants me to be happy; to have children.’ She cast a glance across to the bed, where Sarah, tired and bored without Mary, was now lying next to Thomas, her rag doll abandoned. Her arm was across her brother, and she was almost asleep. ‘I have heard your children playing and I know that is what I want too.’