She had gone no further than Stratford Street when the full impact of what her father had done to her hit her like a blow, and sneaking into a shop doorway out of the snow she began to sob. She had led such a sheltered life – her dad had seen to that. He’d never let her out apart from to go to school, and even that had been restricted to two days a week for as long as she could remember. She didn’t even have any friends to turn to because her father had always kept her too busy to make any. She had often wondered, as she lay in the bedroom that adjoined her parents’, what the guttural noises coming from their room were. And now, after what he had done to her, she knew. The tears fell faster as she thought of what her mother must have suffered all these years. The noises had often been followed by the sound of her mother sobbing while her father snored.

‘Oh, Mammy,’ she whimpered to the dark night. ‘I miss you so much!’ At that moment a stray dog poked his nose into the doorway and she started. It was hard to see what colour he was in the darkness but as she tentatively put out a hand to stroke him, she could feel his ribs. ‘You poor thing,’ she whispered. ‘Are you hungry?’ The dog wagged his tail as if he understood what she was saying and sniffing back her tears she rummaged in her bundle and brought out the loaf. ‘Here, boy, have some o’ this.’ She broke a chunk off and held it out to him and he gobbled it down so fast that he almost choked. In no time at all she had fed him the whole loaf and he licked her hand as she pulled herself to her feet. ‘I can’t stay any longer,’ she told him. ‘But you stay in ’ere, eh? At least you’ll be out of the snow.’

The dog stood in the shop doorway as she set off into the night and she paused just once to look back at him before going on, with no idea whatsoever where she might be going. She only knew she needed to put some distance between herself and the man she had always believed to be her father.

A short time later she found herself outside the railway station and an idea occurred to her. There was a waiting room on the platform and there was usually a fire lit in there, and at least it would be some shelter from the cold. But first she would somehow have to sneak past the ticket office, if it was still open.