She opened her leather handbag and offered Peggy a cigarette from a silver case. Having lit them both with a matching lighter, she must have seen the others eyeing these expensive accessories with confusion, for she shrugged. ‘Yeah, smart, ain’t they? But they come at a cost, so don’t be envious.’

Peggy placed a cup of tea at her elbow and sat down next to her. ‘What happened, Ruby? Why haven’t you written back to us?’

Ruby took a sip of tea. ‘I didn’t write cos what I ’ad to say weren’t something to be told in a letter. I’m ever so sorry if you was worried, but things were happening so fast, I barely had time to breathe these last few months.’

Peggy took her hand, sensing that despite the girl’s outward show of calm, it hid a world of pain, and she needed to talk. ‘I’m just thankful you’re home, Ruby. Do you want to tell us what happened?’

Ruby sipped at the tea, the cup rattling in the saucer, her unsteady hand revealing her inner turmoil as she told them how she’d lost her baby. ‘Mike and I had decided on a name should the baby be a girl, so I called her Louise,’ she said finally. ‘Claudine and I buried her in the family plot behind the house, and said prayers for her as the vicar was too far away to get to us until the thaw.’

‘But surely Mike was with you, wasn’t he?’ asked Peggy sharply.

Ruby shook her head. ‘They had dogs and sleds, but there’d been an avalanche which they couldn’t get round.’ She took a shallow breath. ‘I really resented him for not being with me, and ranted and raved against him, the snow and the logging camp for keeping him away. All we ’ad to stay in touch were the two-way radio, and the signal were that bad, it were almost impossible to talk proper or hear what he were saying.’

She dipped her chin. ‘I’m ashamed to admit that I said a lot of hurtful things to him, even though I knew it weren’t his fault, but I was hurt and in terrible pain – I just needed him with me.’

‘Of course you did,’ murmured Cordelia, coming to sit on her other side. ‘You must have felt quite abandoned. But what I don’t understand is why he’s not with you now?’

Biting her lip, Ruby ground out her cigarette. ‘There was an accident at the camp. His dad reckons he was distracted cos of what were happening with me, and didn’t check the chain he’d used to hold a stack of timber they was hauling up on a crane to lift it to the riverbank. The chain snapped or came loose and the timber fell right on him.’ She took a quavering breath and closed her eyes. ‘He didn’t stand a chance,’ she finished softly.

‘Oh, Ruby, my dearest girl,’ gasped Peggy, clutching her hand. ‘I don’t know what to say.’