Rosie was surprised. ‘That’s not like her. Mind you, when I think about it, I could see she was in a mood straight off. You, too, if ye don’t mind me saying.’

Molly didn’t mind at all. ‘I didn’t mean to be grumpy,’ she apologised, ‘but I’d had a bad night myself. When them two started on each other it put me out of my stride, that’s all.’

‘What gave you a bad night then?’

Molly shrugged her shoulders. ‘Something and nothing.’

‘Don’t give me that, lass.’

Molly knew there was no use trying to keep anything from Rosie. ‘All right. I couldn’t go to sleep for thinking of Alfie. God only knows what he must be feeling like, out there all on his own, thinking I cheated on him with another fella.’ She dropped her gaze to the bairn. ‘When nothing could be further from the truth.’

Rosie agreed. ‘If it weren’t for the boxing, you and Alfie would still be together. Married even.’

Pushing the pram across the street, Molly thought about what Rosie had said. ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ she answered. ‘First of all, it wasn’t the boxing that took him away. It was me mam, and her fancy fella. The reason Alfie went away alone was because I made him do so.’

She touched Rosie on the hand in a gesture of friendship. ‘You helped me to convince him, and I’ll be forever grateful for that. If he’d stayed, we’d have got wed like you said. Alfie would have been lumbered with all the kids and spent his life working to support us.’ She shook her head. ‘Much as I love and miss him, Rosie, I couldn’t let that happen, and that’s why he had to go away.’

‘Aye.’ Rosie had seen it all. ‘But it seems a sad thing all the same… you here and him in America, and the pair of youse head over heels in love. It’s a cruel old world, so it is.’

Thrusting thoughts of Alfie out of her mind, Molly urged, ‘Come on, Rosie, get a move on or we’ll have Granny Arkwright and the others out getting their own shopping. And we don’t want that now, do we?’

‘No, we certainly don’t!’ And Rosie put on a spurt that had Molly almost running with the pram.

It was a busy day, with two customers down Penny Street, one down Bent Street and an old fella from Back Lane. ‘Mind you tell the butcher to skin the chicken leg for me,’ he croaked. ‘I don’t want choking.’

Granny Arkwright wanted meat from the butcher, so Rosie and Molly combined the two errands. ‘You’re an enterprising pair, that you are,’ the butcher said in admiration. ‘Keep the customers coming, that’s all I ask.’ And he swung his cleaver with such force it had Rosie ducking.

Outside, Rosie asked, ‘What’s enterprising mean?’

Molly wondered how best to explain. ‘It means you go out and do things,’ she said. ‘You know… to make a better life.’