Molly did her best to reassure her. ‘It’s got to be different from now on, Mam,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to Dad. I’ll tell him how we nearly lost you, as well as the bairn. I’ll warn him that things have got to change. He’ll have to change!’

‘He can’t change, lass. He doesn’t know how.’ Bowing her head, Amy quietly wept. Her tears had been suppressed over the years, and only now were they released. ‘I know you mean well, but it’s too late. Like a fool, I’ve let it go on for too long, until there’s nothing I can say or do that will make him change his ways.’

Knowing it to be the truth, Molly felt helpless. ‘Do you still love him, Mam?’ The thought had never entered her head before but now, somehow, it seemed all-important.

Amy shook her head. ‘I stopped loving him a long time ago,’ she murmured. ‘To be honest, I don’t know if I ever did love him.’ Looking up, she confessed, ‘There was someone else, you see.’ Her fleeting smile was incredibly beautiful. ‘Someone I gave my heart to a long time ago.’

Molly was intrigued but strangely, not shocked. ‘I never knew.’

‘No one did.’

‘Who is he?’

Amy laughed. ‘He was as crazy as they come; you never knew from one minute to the next what he was up to. He had these grand plans, you see. But they never came to anything.’ Until now, she realised with astonishment, because now all his dreams seemed to have come true – except for having her. But then, he had given up that right after he walked away when she needed him most!

‘We all have dreams, Mam.’ Molly knew this more than most, especially where she and Alfie were concerned.

‘He made me laugh, you know. He was a wide boy and a waster, but oh, he did make me laugh.’ Remembering, Amy shook her head and tutted. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things he got involved in. One minute he was rich as a king, and the next as poor as a church mouse.’

Molly had never seen her mam this way before, her voice soft and caressing, her face aglow with joy. It was obvious this former sweetheart was etched deep in Amy’s heart. ‘How long did you know him?’

‘Long enough to know there’d come a day when he would break my heart.’ In the end, that was exactly what Jack Mason had done.

The bitterness in her mother’s voice was a stark contrast to the happiness that had lit her face only a moment ago. ‘And did he?’

Mentally shaking herself, Amy glanced up. ‘Did he what?’

‘Break your heart?’

Realising she couldn’t explain what had happened without Molly learning the truth of her birth, Amy skirted the question.

All the same, fired by the past, and eager to share some of it, she went on, ‘We were all friends together… me and Frank, and Jack Mason – that was his name. Then there was Bernard and Richard Brindle and the other Brindle brothers – Billy, Joe, Harry, Sonny and Alec… three sisters an’ all – Anita, Winnie and Mary Jane.’ She chuckled warmly. ‘By! We did have some fun though. Me and Frank started courting, and as for Jack the Lad, well, he had one sweetheart after another, and none of them lasted more than a fortnight. After a time, he upped sticks and moved on and nobody knew where he’d gone.’