She walked into the bedroom and forced a smile on to her face. Briony lay in bed, pale and wan. Her usually animated face was drawn and dark circles were visible under her eyes. Molly could see the expert bindings around her breasts through her nightdress, and the sadness in her daughter’s drawn face.

‘Are you feeling all right, Briony?’

She looked at her mother and sighed.

‘She took him, Mum. Isabel. She took him home with her.’

Molly sat on the edge of the bed and grasped Briony’s hand. ‘Of course she did, love. It would do you no good to see too much of him.’

Briony pulled her hand from her mother’s and her face set in a pout. It made her look very young and very spoilt. Seeing the look, Molly herself sighed. Briony was the only one of her daughters who had never been biddable. She had always gone her own way. Even as a tiny child, when Molly had chastised her for something, Briony had taken the punishment and then gone and done exactly what she wanted to. It was this trait in her daughter’s character that was evident now. Briony was quite capable of getting out of bed and going to Isabel Dumas’ and taking the child. Molly tried a different tack.

‘Look, Briony, Mrs Dumas can give the boy everything. He’ll be educated, he’ll be well looked after, with all sorts of people seeing to his every whim. He’ll grow up with all this-’ she gestured around her ‘-as part and parcel of his everyday life. Would you honestly take that chance from him and bring him up in Oxlow Lane? Because if you take that child now, you can kiss goodbye to this place, and the three pounds a week, and everything else you ever wanted. If someone had come and asked me for any one of you, I’d have given you up, and gladly. This is like a gift from the gods, girl. Your boy’s being offered the chance to be somebody. Don’t ruin it for him.’

Briony let her mother’s words sound inside her head. It saddened her that she was in such a position. It was as if the three pounds a week to keep her mother and sisters at Oxlow Lane was the most important thing in the world. And the worst part of all was, she knew it was important. It was Briony’s sole responsibility to keep them where they were now accustomed to being. How could she take Eileen and Kerry and Bernie and Rosalee back to the dockside slums? Eileen would never be fit to work again so it would all fall on Briony’s shoulders and her mother’s while the two younger girls would be left to look after Eileen and Rosalee. Their lives would all become set into a pattern that they’d never be able to change.