Before going downstairs she checked on Alice. Her daughter was just over three now and every day Olive marvelled how something so bonny and perfect could have come from her body. Alice was fast asleep, curled under the covers like a small animal in its nest, and as Olive gently turned back the clothes a few inches she could see the outline of her child’s face in the dim light, her amazingly long lashes lying like a dark smudge on her sleep-flushed skin and her beautiful chestnut hair tumbled about her face and shoulders. Everyone adored Alice – everyone except her father that was, Olive thought as her thin mouth pulled tight – and her two grandmas were besotted with her. How much that was to do with the fact that Adam would have little to do with her, she didn’t know. His mam had been the only one, besides herself, who had dared to take him to task on the matter and by her own account she’d received short shrift. But no amount of love and fondness by the rest of the family could make up for the lack of it in Alice’s own da, and the child, small as she was, was affected by his coldness towards her.

Olive tiptoed out of the bedroom, the familiar weight of self-condemnation and remorse heavy on her heart. She would give her life for her child without a second thought, but through something she had done Alice was the one who had to pay for it every day of her life. The look in her bairn’s eyes sometimes when her da pushed her away or spoke sharply was almost more than she could bear, but for some reason the older Alice had got the more she tried to please him, to get him to love her. It had been easier in one way when Alice was a baby and had been frightened of him, much as she’d hated that, but over the last year that fear had gone and she didn’t understand why.