He smiled at Eileen as he spoke and she felt terror grip her heart.

Paddy Cavanagh stood in the centre of the foetid basement room and stared around him. Rosalee awakened and began to cry. Briony immediately began to rock her gently, soothing her back to sleep. Molly stared dull-eyed from the bed, Bernadette and Kerry dozing beside her.

‘The child’s well on then, Moll?’

She nodded, then frowned as she saw him making up the fire. ‘Where’s our Eileen, Pat? I sent her out to get the coal a couple of hours since.’

He stared into the fire. Briony’s eyes seemed to be boring into his.

‘I met her on me way home. I’d got her a job and she went there tonight.’

Molly sat up in the bed.

‘You what?’ Her voice was low.

Paddy turned to face his wife, working himself up into a temper.

‘You heard me, woman! I got her a job. Jesus himself knows we need the bloody money! She’ll be well looked after, she’ll get decent clothes and food ...’

‘Where’s this job, Pat? Come on, tell me, where is this job?’

He could hear the doubt in his wife’s voice and felt a wave of anger. She did not trust him at all. Not with anything to do with the girls.

‘It’s working for Mr Dumas, the man who owns the blacking factory. She’ll be working in the house, Moll.’

‘Go and get her this minute, Paddy Cavanagh. I don’t want her working sixteen hours a day, running round like a blue-arsed fly for a few pennies a week.’

Paddy stormed to the bed and slapped his wife across the face. ‘I’ve said what she’s going to do, and now it’s done. I want to hear no more about it.’

Kerry and Bernadette both inhaled loudly at the slap their father gave to their mother. Kerry’s mouth was open in a large ‘O’ and Paddy raised his hand to her before the shriek came out.

She snapped her mouth shut immediately.

‘I’ll scalp the bloody face of the first one to whinge in this house tonight. I mean it.’

As he turned to the fireplace, the two sovereigns slipped from his hand and landed with a gentle chink on the dirt floor.

Molly pulled herself up on the bed and stared at them in amazement. Then, as her eyes flew up to meet her husband’s, realisation dawned.

‘You filthy bastard, you sold her to him, didn’t you? You sold my lovely Eileen to that man ...’ She put her hands to her head and began to cry, a low deep moaning that wrenched Paddy Cavanagh’s heart from his body.

He tried to take her in his arms.

‘Molly, Moll ... Listen to me, she’ll be living like a queen up there. Look, we’ll get two pounds every week ...’