Seeing that tempers were about to fly, Matron firmly took the situation in hand. ‘You’ll be in a lot more trouble if you don’t stop stealing, Ronnie,’ she told the scowling child. ‘This must not happen again, do you understand?’

Shuffling his dirty, worn-out shoes, Ronnie made an angry grunting noise. ‘Do you understand?’ The senior nun repeated her question even more firmly. ‘You too, Sally?’ she added, turning to the little girl, who was clutched weeping in her mother’s arms.

‘Yesss …’ Sally sobbed.

Rising with her daughter clasped to her chest, Rosie spoke with as much dignity as she could summon up. ‘It won’t happen again – I’ll see to it.’

With the family gone, the three nuns stared anxiously at one another.

‘I’ll have to report this to the Reverend Mother,’ Ann told her sisters.

‘Of course,’ Sister Theresa nodded.

‘Do you really think Rosie can control Ronnie?’ Sister Mary Paul asked.

Sister Theresa, who had escorted the children to Grange when they first started school and knew them better than most, answered cautiously. ‘She’s just about got Sally under control but as far as Ronnie goes?’ She shook her head in despair. ‘He runs rings around his poor mother.’

Matron stared thoughtfully out of the window. ‘The Reverend Mother will not countenance theft,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve given them a second chance, but, if this happens again, I’m in no doubt that the Reverend Mother will remove them from the Home.’

Inevitably news of the dining-room thefts spread around Mary Vale, and people held varying views on the children’s behaviour.

‘Greedy little sods, stealing our food,’ some grumbled.

‘They don’t know any better,’ others said in the children’s defence.

‘Dragged up, that’s their problem.’

‘It’s the mother I feel sorry for.’

‘She’s about as effective as a condom in a brothel,’ somebody sniggered.

‘Better lock up your riches!’ a resident joked. ‘Those kiddies could be nicking from us next.’

This remark was followed by a loud hoot of laughter.

‘What riches?’ someone chuckled.

Sybil’s witch-green eyes swept over the women assembled around the table. ‘Now there’s a thought,’ she mused.

Her fellow residents, poor as they might be, surely had a few precious trinkets that they would seriously resent anyone meddling with.