Ruby stood staring down Devonshire Street, an army of butterflies creating havoc in her stomach. She’d travelled by train from Newcastle, and on leaving Central Station she’d caught a tram to Ellie’s parents’ house and told her mother what had happened to Ellie, feeling it was her duty to acquaint them with the news. She hadn’t expected an outpouring of grief and there hadn’t been any; she hadn’t even been asked over the threshold. She had walked away from the house shaking with rage but knowing she had fulfilled what had needed to be done. But now she was home, she told herself; in the street where her mam and da lived and where she’d spent the first eighteen years of her life, happy years on the whole, but although the surroundings were familiar, she felt as though she was a stranger. She hadn’t expected the sense of detachment and it was a little unnerving.

Devonshire Street was devoid of bairns for once. The older children would be in school, and the bitterly cold weather would have kept the toddlers indoors, but the lack of noise and activity added to the unrealness that had gripped her.

She took a deep breath of the icy air, knowing she couldn’t stand where she was all day. She had made the decision to come back and she had to follow through on all it entailed; it would be ridiculous not to now, but what if Olive was visiting her parents with the bairn when she turned up? She wasn’t ready to face her sister, not yet, not until she had talked to her mam and da.

It was beginning to snow a little in the wind, and again she told herself to move, smoothing the lapels of her coat and adjusting her hat. She had packed an overnight case with a few bits and pieces but even now she wasn’t sure if she was up to staying at her mam’s, or whether to find a room in a hotel.