Amber couldn’t help but smile. For all her shouting, Sadie was as soft as butter inside. The children were lovely too, if rather undisciplined. Now each night Amber squashed into one of the two beds in the attic room with Nancy’s four sisters, and although it was a bit of a squeeze, she was grateful for the children’s warmth because the wind seemed to find every opening in the thatched roof.

Nancy’s father was a fisherman, as Amber’s own had been, and thankfully the family never went hungry, although their staple diet consisted of fish and boiled cabbage. Sadie wasn’t too keen on cleaning either and Amber dreaded to think how long it might have been since the sheets had been changed, or the children’s clothes for that matter. But even so, she was grateful that Sadie had taken her in and made her feel so welcome.

Thankfully Amber had been able to give Sadie some of the money she had saved from when she had worked in London to cover her keep, but now she was seriously concerned about what she would do when it was all gone. She could hardly expect Sadie to keep her for nothing and knew that if the worst came to the worst she would have to go to her uncle and try to find a job in Scarborough. But worrying as all this was, the biggest problem she’d had since her mother had left to go to her uncle’s was Bertie Preston. He seemed to be hounding her and he was scathing each time he saw her.

Amber picked her way through the tangle of little bodies rolling around the floor and made for the fire where she held her hands out to the heat of the flames. They were blue with cold and as the feeling started to return to them, she flinched with the pain of the pins and needles. Her feet felt no better and she was miserable as she gently unwound her thick shawl from about her head and shoulders. It had offered little protection against the biting cold and already she was dreading the next morning when she would start the whole process of job-hunting again.

However, her sad mood didn’t last too long when Sadie fetched her a steaming mug of tea and told her, ‘There’s a letter come for you today, lass. It’s on the mantelshelf, look. I bet it’s from yer mam.’

Amber snatched it down eagerly and after removing a load of dirty clothes from the fireside chair she sank into it and split the envelope open.

Her throat tightened with tears as she saw her mother’s familiar handwriting and she began to read.

Dear Amber,