‘Are you happy, Amy?’ That was his constant worry, that she might grow unhappy away from her children, and he would lose her.

Amy read his thoughts. ‘I do miss them,’ she murmured, ‘Molly and the others. I can’t help but wonder what they think of me, running away and leaving them all like that.’

‘They knew what your life was like,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m sure they understand.’

‘I hope he isn’t making their lives as much of a misery as he made mine.’

‘Why would he? None of it is their fault, any more than it was yours.’

‘I hope you’re right, Jack. I hope he sees it that way, too.’

‘I haven’t changed my mind, love.’ He thought to put that straight right now. ‘It would cripple me to have the children. I’m not the father type. I wish I was, but I’m not, and I never could be.’

Amy had seen that, and accepted it. ‘I know,’ she laughed. ‘I’ve seen for myself how you cringe when a child comes near you.’

‘That’s what comes of being brought up in a children’s home,’ he said. ‘You never have space enough for yourself. They’re everywhere. You can’t escape them day or night… children of all ages, some so young they cried for their mammies every waking minute, and others, the bigger ones, who bullied us all without mercy.’

As he spoke, she could see the tension in his face. ‘We were squashed into these awful dormitories – even had to share a bed if there were none going spare. Three in a bathtub, and sometimes eighteen or twenty round the table, always crowding… noise and fighting every day.’

He visibly shuddered: the awful memories of his parents dying, and the trauma of growing up in the children’s home still affected him badly. Taking a gulp of his drink, he told her truthfully, ‘I’m sorry, Amy. If I could change I would, but I can’t… not even if it means losing you.’

‘It’s all right, Jack. I understand, really I do.’ She had witnessed his nightmares and seen the pain in his eyes whenever he talked of ‘that place’, and she knew him now, better than she had ever done. She had come to understand how he grew to be a tearaway, and how hard it must have been for him to make a success of his life the way he had. Jack was a good man; Frank was not. ‘You won’t lose me,’ she said passionately. ‘Never!’

He looked at her then, and no man had ever loved a woman more. ‘You’re the only light in my life,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve always loved you, Amy. Ever since I first saw you.’

‘And you’re the only man I’ve ever loved,’ she confessed. ‘I’ve never known such joy and contentment before.’ But there was a price, and whatever others might believe, she would pay it every time she saw a child on the streets; every time she woke with a start, haunted by the faces of the innocents she had left behind.