She wanted to hold him, but she knew better. He might have wanted it too, but he would never have allowed such an admission. It would mean he was dependent, and he could not afford that. He had lived in the docks, scavenging for pieces of coal off the barges, brass screws, and other small valuable objects that had fallen off boats into the Thames mud. The low tide allowed boys like him—mudlarks—to survive. He had a mother somewhere, but perhaps she had too many younger children, and neither the time nor room to care for him. Or maybe she had a new husband who did not want another man’s son in the house. Boys like himself had been his friends, sharing food, warmth, and one another’s pain, comrades in survival.

“Have another biscuit,” Hester offered.

“I’ve ’ad two,” he pointed out. “That was ’alf.”

“Yes, I know. I took more than I wanted,” she replied. “I thought I was hungry, but now I’m just awake.”

He looked at her carefully, deciding if she meant it, then took the last biscuit and ate it in three mouthfuls.

She smiled at him, and after a moment he smiled back.

“Are you sleepy?” she asked.

“No …”

“Nor am I.” She hitched herself up a little so she could sit on the bed with her head against the headboard beside him, but still keeping a distance away. “Sometimes when I’m awake I read, but I haven’t got a good book at the moment. The newspaper’s full of all sorts of things I don’t really want to know.”

“Like wot?” he asked, twisting round so he was facing her a little more, settling in for a conversation.

She listed off a few social events she remembered, adding where they had been held and who had attended. Neither of them cared, but it was something to say. Presently she wandered off the subject and remembered past events, describing clothes and food, then behavior, wit, flirting, disasters, anything to keep him entertained. She even recalled the chaotic remembrance service where her friend Rose had been hopelessly and unintentionally drunk; she had climbed onto the stage and seized the violin from the very earnest young lady who had been playing it, and had then given her own rendition of several current music hall songs, growing bawdier with each.

Scuff giggled, trying to picture it in his mind. “Were it terrible?” he asked.

“Ghastly,” Hester affirmed with relish. “She told them all the truth of what a fearful person the dead man had been, and why they had really come. It was awful then, but I laugh every time I think of it now.”

“She were yer friend.” He said the word slowly, tasting its value.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“D’yer ’elp ’er?”

“As much as I could.”

“Fig were my friend,” he said very quietly. “I din’t ’elp ’im. Nor the other neither.”