‘I’ll see. I can’t promise.’ Jane took the bobbins from the warehouse boy and started to walk away from her friend.

‘Twelve-thirty, top of the High Street next to the churchyard. Wear your sash, you can help me carry the banner,’ shouted Nellie after her, before walking in the opposite direction. ‘I’ll see you there. We need you to help organize.’

Jane walked down the cobbled mill yard and made her way over Belmont Bridge, stopping on the top to look at the barges on the canal make their way underneath and unload their cargo along the quayside. She watched as an elderly man kept lowering a bucket full of holes down into the dirty waters of the canal. His body was nearly bent double with age, and she watched as he dragged the bucket along the bottom of the canal until the weight told him it was full of what he was dredging for: black gold, coal from the barges that had supplied Dewhurst’s powerful engines and had fallen into the canal. She saw him sort the rubbish from the coal, throwing it back into the canal. He put the lumps of coal into the old wooden cart that she’d seen him trundling around Skipton with, to hawk his stolen gains to those who’d buy it.

What a way to make a living, she thought, as she started her walk back home. But then again, there were many who earned a living from nothing – she knew that. Then there were the likes of her mother’s customers, some of whom had more money than sense. Jane realized that she was privileged, but she also knew it was as a result of her grandmother’s hard work. How she missed her grandmama, who’d always been there for her; she’d have sorted out the mess at home and would have been there for Jane to talk to. Instead, she had been shoved down into the warehouse and told to collect the bobbins that she now held in her hand, like a common errand girl. Her mother thought nothing of her; all she thought of was her precious business. That’s why her father’s head had been turned – Isabelle had no time for him, just as she hadn’t for her.

Damn it, she would go on Saturday’s march just to defy her mother, if nothing else.

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