‘Oh, she’ll be safe all right, here, ’cos this is where we’ll be staying now, isn’t it? She’ll be safe when the real winter comes, and the shite’s bursting into the room, and the cold would cut the lugs from yer. Two pounds a bloody week we’ll lose, two Christing pounds! She’s up there, dressed up to the nines and eating her fecking head off as and when she fancies it. Well, she’ll get a shock when she gets back here, madam. She’ll have to go out to work, they all will, if we’re to get the house in Oxlow Lane. Even that fecking eejit.’ He pointed to Rosalee.

Molly sat on the fender and tapped the wooden spoon against her hand.

‘There’s that to it, I suppose.’ All her dreams were dissolving in front of her eyes, of a nice little house, two up, two down, with a bit of garden out the back, and no more living in basements without enough to eat. Instead it was no more boots for the girls or tea for herself, as and when she wanted it. Once going to Uncle every Tuesday with the blankets and sheets and anything else pawnable had been their way of life, until Paddy brought home some money. Now it would be again, it seemed.

‘Well, woman, it’s done now and I expect you’ve saved yourself a bit, to see us over until the spring?’

Molly didn’t answer. As far as Paddy Cavanagh was concerned, the less he knew about her money situation the better.

‘Yes, as large as life he says to me, “Paddy, I don’t want the miserable-looking item any longer.” The cheek of it!’ He sneaked a glance at Molly as he enlarged on his story, building up to the point of it.

‘And then, Moll ... I was all for bashin’ him, you know, except I don’t want to go along the line. Anyway, then he says to me, “I’d give two pound ten a week for your Briony!”’

Molly was up in a flash.

‘He what?’

‘“Two pounds ten?” says I.’ Paddy poked himself in the chest as he spoke. ‘“Two pounds ten,” I says. “Not fifty pounds a week will get you another of my girls!”’

Molly nodded her head, the wooden spoon like a truncheon in her clenched fist.

‘“Three pounds then,” he says to me. “Three pounds and we’ll negotiate again in six months.”’

Paddy, warming to his story, began to embroider it freely. ‘“Never,” says I. “Not for all the gold in London town. Be off, you bugger,” I said, Moll. “Get yourself away out of that,” I said...’

She nodded again. ‘You did right, Paddy. You did right. When I think of what my Eileen’s suffered this last year...’ Her voice broke with shame and remorse.