Rage was uppermost. He could, without the slightest compunction, have throttled her at this moment. How dared she have dismissed him from her life so easily? So completely? When he existed in a living hell because of her?

They stared at each other for some seconds and Ruby, recognizing what was in his face, kept perfectly still. She had decided the night before, as she had lain in bed going over everything she and Olive had said, exactly how she would deal with Adam if they met up in the future, which was highly likely now she had determined to pay regular visits home. She just hadn’t expected the confrontation to be so soon.

‘You’ve changed,’ he said at last, his voice bitter. ‘You’ve become hard.’

Her expression didn’t alter although his words hurt. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way but it doesn’t alter the facts. If you gave Olive a chance—’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’ His glare was almost maniacal and she watched the effort it took for him to gain control before he said, ‘Go on, go and catch your damn train.’

She forced herself not to scurry past him, frightened as she was. This man was not the easy-going, amiable lad she remembered – he had changed beyond all recognition. Her mam had been right. And yet the old Adam still had to be there, surely? The Adam who would carefully take a spider out of the house rather than killing it and who had traipsed round the streets for hours finding homes for the kittens his da had wanted to drown in the privy. His da and brothers had taken the mickey and called him soft, but she had loved that side of him.

Quietly, she said, ‘I only meant that in letting go of the past you could make something good of the future, Adam. For you as much as anyone. Alice is a lovely little girl and bairns bring such joy.’

It was some seconds before he said gruffly, ‘She should have been yours.’

What could she say to that? It was what she’d thought herself every minute she’d been with Alice the day before. Seeing her mam and da with their grandchild and the way Olive was with her had brought a physical ache into her chest, and she’d had to battle against something akin to grief the whole time.

She met his eyes and for a moment the look they exchanged took them back to when they were just a young lass and lad making plans for the future they’d share together, a future in which they had never pictured anything else but having their own little home and family, of growing old together and watching their grandchildren arrive in their golden years. Through her whirling emotions, she said softly, ‘But she is yours, your daughter, part of you.’