‘Just think what might have happened if you had gone,’ she said to Ivy as she read the newspaper. ‘You could have been arrested too!’ She still wasn’t at all happy about her being involved with the suffragettes but Ivy wouldn’t budge on her decision to be part of them and believed wholeheartedly in what the movement was striving for.

‘The government have brought it on themselves,’ Ivy replied shortly. ‘They’ve granted concessions to the miners and the railwaymen after they went on strike but they still won’t listen to women.’

Holly could only sigh. It seemed that Ivy had made her mind up to support the movement no matter what she said.

Then only four days later Ivy was late home from work. It was most unlike her and as Holly prepared their evening meal she started to worry.

At nine o’clock she finally decided to go and look for her. What if she had been attacked on her way home from work? She might be lying in an alley injured somewhere. She had got no further than the shop door when she saw a rather bedraggled Ivy further along the street heading towards her. Her hat was askew and there was a tear in her new coat.

‘Oh, where have you been? I’ve been so worried. I was just setting off to look for you.’ Holly scolded, feeling like her mother.

‘I, er … I was at the police station,’ Ivy told her, shuffling from foot to foot.

‘The police station!’ Holly looked shocked. ‘But why?’

‘The suffragettes stormed into the House of Commons today and ninety-six of us got arrested.’

‘You what?’ Holly was appalled.

‘It’s all right,’ Ivy assured her. ‘They had us all up in front o’ the magistrates a couple of hours ago and because it was my first offence I got off wi’ a caution and a hand slap.’

Holly’s lips pressed into a disapproving line as she shook her head.

‘Oh, Ivy, where is this going to end? Can’t you see the danger you’re putting yourself in?’

Ivy grinned. ‘It’ll end when us women get the vote an’ equal rights to men,’ she replied and Holly knew it was pointless to argue with her further.

Chapter Ten

In April the papers were full of the tragedy that had occurred on the Titanic, reputably an unsinkable ship, that had sunk after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York killing hundreds of people in the icy seas.

‘Eeh, yer can’t begin to imagine how terrifyin’ it must have been fer all them poor souls, can you?’ Ivy said as she read the report aloud to Holly.

Holly shook her head as tears filled her eyes, grateful that no one she loved had been aboard. It just went to show how fragile life was. Suddenly she had the overwhelming urge to see her mother and decided there and then that she would visit her the very next Sunday. She would even bear the brunt of her grandfather’s bad temper if need be. Her mother was all she had.