Ruby flushed with pleasure as she opened it to reveal a little silver locket suspended on a fine chain.

‘Oh, Mammy, it’s beautiful. But however did you manage to get this?’ It had been months since Rita had been well enough to leave the house.

Rita smiled. ‘My mother gave it to me on my twenty-first birthday but seeing as I won’t be here when you’re twenty-one I’d like you to have it now.’

The smile instantly vanished from Ruby’s face and her eyes welled with tears as she flicked her long red plait across her shoulder. ‘Don’t talk like that, you know it upsets me. O’ course, you’ll be here!’

Rita shook her head sadly as she took Ruby’s small hand in her own. No one would ever have believed she was now fifteen, for she was so small and dainty that she looked no older than ten or eleven at most. ‘You know that isn’t true,’ Rita said softly. ‘And when I’m gone, I want you to promise me something. I want you to leave here too. If you don’t, him downstairs will work you to death.’ Just as he has me, she thought, although she didn’t say it.

Ruby was openly crying now as she wrapped her arms about the woman who had always shown her nothing but kindness.

‘But I couldn’t do that,’ she answered. ‘He’s me dad for all his faults and he needs me to help him.’

Rita shook her head. It was time to share the secret she had hoped she would never have to tell. ‘But he ain’t your dad, sweetheart,’ she whispered, her breath growing laboured. ‘You see, I was never able to have children of me own so we adopted you when you was but a few days old. I rue the day now, ’cause he’s almost worked you into the ground ever since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and I want you to know I’m sorry.’

Ruby stared at her incredulously. It had never occurred to her that she wasn’t their real daughter, although she had often wondered where her red hair, pale skin and freckles had come from. And then Stan’s voice bellowed up the stairs and the moment was broken.

‘Ruby, get your arse down ’ere right now else you’ll feel the length o’ me belt, girl!’

‘Go,’ her mother advised as panic gripped her. ‘But promise me you’ll do as I ask, and never doubt that I love you.’

With a little nod, Ruby left the room, her mind reeling at her mother’s disclosure.

She had never had reason to doubt that the people who had brought her up were anything other than her birth parents but now she wondered where her real mother could be, and whether she would ever know.

*