He stared at her for a moment before nodding. ‘Yes, I can see you are now. But my, how you’ve grown. You were just a child the last time I saw you. How is your mother and what brings you here?’

Amber blushed as she noticed that some of the customers who were browsing in the shop were staring at her. Jeremiah noticed too and lifting the lid on the counter he beckoned to her. ‘Come on through to the back. Young Archie here can mind the shop for a while.’

Archie proved to be the young man she had met outside and he gave her a smile as her uncle ushered her into a small room at the back of the shop. There was a little stove in the corner where they obviously boiled water for their tea breaks and two mismatched wing chairs that had certainly seen better days. The rest of the room was stacked with surplus stock.

‘So,’ he said as lifted the kettle onto the small stove to boil. ‘I hope you’re not the bearer of bad news?’

Without a word, Amber handed him the letter from her mother and wrung her hands as he placed a pair of spectacles on the end of his nose and proceeded to read it. Once he was done, he narrowed his eyes and stared at her as Amber shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

‘So why can’t you stay at home with your mother until the child is born?’ he asked curiously and Amber gulped.

‘I, er . . . that is, me husband and me had our own place an’ I’ve had to give it up,’ she mumbled. She had never been very good at lying. ‘An’ me mam ain’t got room for me there wi’ all me brothers an’ all. But just as soon as the baby is born, I can go back,’ she hurried on. ‘An’ me mam will have found a place fer me by then an’ . . .’ Her words trailed off as she saw the look on her uncle’s face. He clearly didn’t believe a word her mother had written and certainly nothing she’d said.

Her shoulders sagged as she slowly turned to leave, but before she had reached the door her uncle’s voice stayed her as he said gently, ‘So why don’t we start again and we’ll have the truth this time.’

She turned back and stared at him for a moment and then stumblingly she began to tell him what had happened. Of her affair with her master and the gold sovereign he had given her to get rid of the child, and once she was done, tears were raining down her cheeks.

‘I . . . I thought he loved me,’ she choked. ‘But I was a fool, he was just using me.’