Her face stiff and unforgiving, Molly folded the card and handed it back to Rosie. ‘I’m glad she at least had the decency to write to you.’

Rosie understood Molly’s hardness, but it made her sad all the same. ‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘What else should I say?’

‘I mean… it sounds to me as if she might be regretting her decision to run off and leave you all.’

‘It didn’t sound like that to me.’

‘Will you never forgive her?’

Molly’s heart ached with love for her mam yet, deep down inside, she could not find it in her to forgive. ‘She didn’t talk it over with me. I’m sure we could have worked something out, if only she’d told me what was going on.’ Anger hardened her heart. ‘She didn’t trust me enough.’

‘She must have been so unhappy, love.’

‘I think about that a lot, but it still doesn’t excuse what she did. Leaving a note like that was such a cowardly thing to do.’

‘I don’t think your mam is really a coward, do you?’

Fighting back her emotions, it was an age before Molly answered. ‘Maybe not. Putting up with Dad, having the last babies one after the other, couldn’t have been easy, especially if she was still in love with this other fella after all these years.’ Molly recalled the evening at the infirmary when Amy had spoken to her about Jack Mason. ‘When she told me about him she seemed years younger, as if she was a young girl again, but I never dreamed she’d run off with him like that, leaving the bairns behind an’ all.’ Regret engulfed her. ‘Oh Rosie, I do want to forgive her, but how can I?’

Rosie had no answer to that. Instead she asked, ‘Do ye think your dad has tried to find her?’

‘Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t. We don’t talk about it.’

‘Is he still giving you grief over money?’

Molly rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘It’s hard work getting any housekeeping from him.’

‘Have you noticed a change in him lately?’

‘He doesn’t come home drunk so often, if that’s what you mean.’ She chuckled. ‘He hasn’t brought any street-women home neither, not since your Sandra…’

Her voice faltered and she couldn’t go on, and for a time they were silent, lost in fond memories of Sandra.

Presently, Molly had a question. ‘When is Alfie going back?’

‘I wish to God he wasn’t, but he’s planning to leave tomorrow, about three o’clock. His trainer has him on a tight schedule.’

‘Is he happy, Rosie?’

‘No more than you are, lass.’

‘Life’s a mess, isn’t it?’ Bitterness crept back. ‘That’s what I mean, about Mam running off like that. She had no thought for me, or the bairns.’

Her arms opened wide as she glanced round the room. ‘Look at me, Rosie! I’m nineteen years old, and I’ve had to take her place. I can’t do what I want, go where I want, or have the man I love. And though I adore the children, they’re not mine, are they? All I wanted was my Alfie, and bairns of my own.’ Her voice shook with emotion. ‘And now it’s all gone. Our mam took it with her when she ran off.’