When she returned to the parlour, Rosie was sitting, the letter opened on her lap and a look of horror on her face. ‘I can’t believe it!’ she kept saying. ‘I never would have thought she could do a thing like that – leave your da, yes, maybe – but never the children!’ Shaking her head, she looked up at Molly. ‘Do you know who this fella is?’

‘Someone she knew years ago and now he’s back, like it says in the letter.’

‘Any idea where she’s gone?’

‘No.’

‘If we were to track her down somehow, do you think we could persuade her to come home?’

‘You’ve read the letter, Rosie. What do you reckon?’

‘She must have thought long and hard about it,’ the Irishwoman imagined. ‘No, I don’t think a team of wild horses would fetch her back.’

‘Or half a dozen children!’ Molly’s voice hardened. ‘I would have done anything for our mam, you know that. I’ve seen what he’s put her through and there have been times when I wanted to kill him myself. But she left the bairns. How could she bring herself to do that?’

‘Happen she thought there was no other way.’ Rosie tried to put herself in Amy’s shoes. ‘After all, it’s hard for a woman who’s got four young childer and no man to provide. Folks tend to turn the other way.’

‘I wouldn’t have turned the other way, and neither would you. I would have helped her… found her a place to rent, given over part of my wages. And Lottie’s out to work now, too. We’d have managed, if she’d left my dad. She should have done it years ago.’ Molly felt like weeping.

‘I don’t think it would have worked, lass.’

‘Maybe not. But we might have worked summat out, only she never gave us the chance.’ Now, in the light of day, and after the initial shock, there were other, more pressing things to consider. ‘However am I to tell the children, Rosie? And what about me and Alfie?’ Coming to sit on the sofa, she looked at the other woman, and for a while, neither of them dared voice their thoughts.

Finally, Rosie spoke the obvious. ‘He’ll never go to America,’ she said. ‘Not without you.’

‘But he has to,’ Molly fretted. ‘One way or another, he must go.’ Already she had the makings of a plan in her mind, but she daren’t mention it to Alfie’s mother, not yet. ‘Will you do something for me?’ she asked.

‘What’s that?’

‘Don’t mention the letter to them at home, or say anything about our mam having run off. I need time to think it all out.’

‘I’ll not say a word, but what will yer do now? You’ll have to tell your da. If he should turn up at the infirmary, there’d be blue murder!’

‘I know.’

‘And what about you?’ Rosie felt for Molly; she saw how Amy’s selfish action had devastated the girl, and yet her anger at Amy was tempered by the fact that life under Frank Tattersall’s rule must have affected her more than anybody realised. ‘You’ll not be able to work, will you. You’ll have to take on your mam’s role. Hard though it is, you’ll need to be a proper mother to them kids.’