‘I’m tellin’ you sure as eggs is eggs this’ll all end in tears, my girl!’ This was Mrs Petty. ‘That girl is little more than a babby an’ she might not have been lucky enough to end up wi’ the best parents in the world but I’d stake my life she’s honest if nothin’ else!’

Ruby realised that Mrs Petty must be speaking about her and her ears pricked up.

‘So what do you expect me to do? Keep her in luxury from here on in?’ Maddie sounded angry.

‘Huh! An’ here I was thinkin’ you’d fetched her ’ere out o’ the goodness of yer heart!’ Mrs Petty sounded incensed. ‘Have yer completely forgotten all the promises you made?’

‘Of course I haven’t but we have to live, don’t we?’ Maddie sounded as if she was crying now and Ruby was more confused than ever. What promises was Mrs Petty on about?

She heard the kitchen door bang open and someone stamp along the hallway so she hastily closed the door, hurried back to her seat and picked up her book. But she needn’t have worried. Whoever had left the kitchen went straight upstairs, leaving Ruby to try and process her thoughts. She had thought herself to be very fortunate indeed the night Maddie had found her after she had run away, but now she was beginning to wonder. More than once she had thought there was something vaguely familiar about Mrs Petty’s face and as she sat there it came to her. She had come into her father’s shop on a few occasions – that’s where she had seen her before. But why hadn’t Mrs Petty told her that, and why would she have been shopping for bread in Nuneaton? Suddenly something else occurred to her and Ruby felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. Because she had only discovered that she had been adopted shortly before her mother’s death she was still struggling to come to terms with it but could it be that Mrs Petty was keeping an eye on her for her real mother, the one who had given her up at birth? And if that was the case, who could it be? Her mind was racing now as the pieces of the jigsaw came together. Maddie! Could she be her real mother? The idea was preposterous and yet the more Ruby thought of it, the more it made sense. Admittedly their hair colour was completely different, but now that she came to think of it there were similarities between them – the pale skin and the sprinkling of freckles across their noses.