‘Oh, Ruby.’ It was a groan and the echo of it was in her own heart. In the time since she had left Sunderland she’d told herself that she and Adam would never have been totally happy together, that in maturing as she had it would have caused problems between them sooner or later, that their marriage would have suffered the more she thought for herself and threw off the tight confines of life as a working-class wife and mother. And all that was probably true. But it didn’t lessen the ache within her right now for what might have been.

Pulling herself together, she said quietly, ‘Try and be happy, Adam.’ Something warned her not to mention her sister’s name, so she just said, ‘For your sake and Alice’s.’

He made no reply but his chin jerked slightly.

Holding out her hand, she said, ‘Can we part as friends?’

‘It should be me saying that after what I did.’ He took her small gloved hand in his own rough one, holding it as he stared down at the fine leather. No women in their community would have worn gloves like this. It further emphasized just how different their lives had become.

The next moment she was walking away, and as he stood there in the whirling flakes of white and watched her go, the pain was as intense as on that snowy night four years ago. More so, perhaps, he acknowledged grimly, because ridiculously, deep, deep down in his subconscious, he’d always harboured the tiniest hope that one day they would get together again, that a miracle would happen. But that most fragile of dreams was over, gone, finished. Just by her lack of condemnation and bitterness towards him she had destroyed it. It was as she had said: she had moved on with her life and there was no place for him in it now.

He removed his cap, banging the snow off it against his trousers and putting it back on his head.

Maybe he had always known it was only an impossible dream but that didn’t make it any the easier to let go of it.

She was lost to view now but still he didn’t move; not until a couple of nattering old wives passed him, staring curiously before continuing their gossiping, did he force his feet to begin walking, and then it was slowly, like an old, old man.

Chapter Seventeen

Olive carefully placed Adam’s evening meal in front of him and then fetched her plate from the side of the range and sat down at the table before she said, ‘Well, we knew it was coming, didn’t we?’