‘I’ve missed two, an’ even if I wanted to marry Bertie, which I don’t, what would I tell him when the baby appears two or three months ahead of its time?’ Amber retorted bitterly. ‘He ain’t soft in the head you know, Mam.’

‘Aw, lass, whatever were you thinkin’ of after all the warnin’s I gave you?’

‘He . . . he told me he loved me.’ Amber sniffed and her mother sighed.

‘Aye well, you ain’t the first an’ you won’t be the last, I dare say, but now what are we to do about it? There’ll be all hell let loose if your dad finds out about it.’

Her mother got up and began to pace up and down the floor as she tried to think. Her husband was a kind man but fiercely protective of his only daughter and she dreaded to think what his reaction would be when he heard the news.

‘The only other option I can think of is for you to go an’ stay wi’ your uncle in Scarborough till it’s over,’ she said.

Amber’s head snapped up. ‘What? Stay with Uncle Jeremiah?’ She looked horrified at the very idea of it. Her uncle was her mother’s older brother by some ten years and was very set in his ways. He had never been married nor shown any inclination to be since being jilted at the altar some long time ago, according to the letters that he wrote to Alice from time to time. Soon after, heartbroken and humiliated, he had started to sell buckets and bowls from a handcart in the market and he had worked hard to make something of himself. Now he had his own thriving hardware shop in the town and lived a stone’s throw away from it in a grand house overlooking the sea with his housekeeper and a little maid who kept it running like clockwork, and although he had never been unkind to her, Amber knew that she wouldn’t be happy there. It had been some years since she had visited with her mother and even though his house made their small cottage look like a hovel, she had no wish to have to stay there.

‘That would never work,’ Amber said sharply. ‘And Uncle Jeremiah wouldn’t want me there once he knew that I was going to have a child.’

‘He would if we were to tell a few white lies.’ Alice stopped her pacing and stared at her daughter with a serious expression on her face. ‘We could tell him that you’d been widowed – that your husband had been a fisherman and lost at sea and you needed somewhere to stay just until the baby arrives. Then when it comes you can leave it on the steps of the poorhouse and come home. They’ll take care of it. I’m presuming you don’t want the bairn?’