If Tom was surprised, he didn’t show it. He took another long drag on his cigarette. ‘And what do you reckon?’ he asked.

‘I reckon they’re right. Edward owed money to the wrong people. Gambling debts, mostly. He took as much as he could out of the business, and then when all that was gone he borrowed from Billy Willis.’ She couldn’t look at Tom as she spoke. Strange as it seemed, she felt a kind of shame, as if Edward’s downfall had somehow been her fault.

‘And let me guess. He was arrogant enough to think he could get away without paying back his debt?’

Anna nodded, her gaze still fixed on the pavement. ‘But I’m told Billy Willis always collects his debts, one way or another.’

‘That he does.’ Tom paused for a moment, then said, ‘What’s he said to you? Do you still owe him?’

‘No, thank God. It was – made clear to me that Edward’s debts died with him.’ She suppressed a shudder, remembering the menacing-looking man who had appeared from the shadows one night when she was returning to the nurses’ home after a late shift three weeks earlier. He had told her he meant no harm, but Anna had still been terrified.

Tom nodded, taking it in. ‘That’s something, at any rate.’

Anna hesitated, wondering whether to speak. Then she said, ‘We weren’t together. When it happened.’ She stared straight ahead of her at the bakery as she spoke, but she could feel Tom looking at her. ‘We’d parted,’ she said quietly. ‘In the summer.’

He didn’t ask why, and she was thankful for that. Perhaps he didn’t need to ask.

Anna looked at her watch. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘I’m due back at the hospital by five.’

‘The hospital? You’re back at the Nightingale?’

She smiled sadly. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’

‘I know the feeling.’

‘Is that why you came back here?’

Tom looked around. ‘I’m not sure why I came back, to be honest with you.’

They lapsed into silence. Anna found herself waiting, hoping that he might say something else. She wasn’t even sure what she wanted him to say, but still she found herself teetering on the edge of hope.

But no words came from him.

‘Well, it was nice to see you,’ she managed at last. ‘I’m glad you came home safely. I suppose we might meet again, if you’re staying in the area?’

She looked at him hopefully. Tom dropped his cigarette butt and ground it into the pavement with the heel of his boot.

Anna turned and had started to walk away when he suddenly called after her,

‘I’ll walk with you.’

She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Isn’t it out of your way?’

He ignored the question, falling into step beside her. All around them there was the rumble of barrows on cobbles as the costermongers closed up their stalls. Horses’ hooves clopped, dogs barked and men shouted to each other, but Anna and Tom walked on, locked in a bubble of silence.