When the clothes were dancing in the hot water, she took the washboard down from the nail on the wall and slid it into the tub. Grabbing one item at a time, she drew it over the board and, scrubbing it up and down on the ridged surface, pummelled the dirt out of it.

When both lots of clothes were washed and dumped in the basket, she switched off the tub and fed the garments through the mangle, to squeeze out the surplus water. That done, she took the basket outside and hung the clothes on the line; there was nothing Molly liked better than to see the washing blowing in the fresh breeze.

Returning to the scullery, she emptied the dolly-tub and tidied up.

‘By! That’s a good morning’s work,’ she sighed, and made herself a cup of tea, even treating herself to a slice of the bread pudding that Rosie had brought round the day before.

Like Molly, Rosie had been busy doing the washing. When it was finished, she made her way up to the Tattersalls’ house and let herself inside; as usual, the door was on the sneck.

Pushing open the parlour door, she smiled at the scene before her. The bairn sleeping in his pram by the back window, the child lying on the sofa, fast asleep, and there beside her was Molly.

With one arm round her little sister, and the other hand clutching a half-eaten portion of bread pudding, Molly, too, was dead to the world.

For a long, emotional moment, Rosie looked down on Molly’s sleeping face. ‘Had a hard day, have you, lass?’ she murmured, and gently eased the bread pudding from her hand. She placed it on the saucer and took it quietly into the scullery, where she replaced it in the larder.

A quick glance at the bairn to make sure he was all right, then another at Molly and the child, and she departed, closing the door behind her.

As she went down the street, Rosie held the picture in her mind. ‘Poor wee girl!’ she muttered. ‘She must have been exhausted.’

Shaking her head in despair, she quickened her steps. ‘I wouldn’t want that lass’s life for a gold clock. There’s Lottie, who causes more trouble than she’s worth, a dad who likes booze and women and doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss for anybody but himself, and a mother who’s turned her back on her own flesh and blood.’ She took a breath. ‘Five childer not of her own, and no money coming in. It doesn’t do thinking about!’

Glancing up at the skies, she saw the storm clouds brewing – in more ways than one. Climbing the steps to her own front door, she glanced back at the Tattersalls’ house. ‘It’s a big cross for a young ’un to carry,’ she whispered. ‘And this is only the beginning.’

Chapter Ten

Molly was at the end of her tether. ‘I’m not having you lying in bed when there’s work to be done,’ she told Lottie. ‘You turn up here after being out all night, then take yourself off to your bed and refuse to get up. You know that Dad will be in any minute. Are you deliberately trying to cause trouble, or what?’