‘Do you think that’ll happen?’ Part of Olive couldn’t believe they were having a conversation like any normal married couple. There had been a change in Adam, and if she pinpointed to when it had begun, she could trace it back to the time Ruby had visited. It had been around then that he had started to talk to her civilly and show an interest in their daughter. She’d spent days tormenting herself by wondering if Adam and Ruby had met and what had gone on between them, and whether the mellowing in his manner had been a result of Ruby taking him to task. And then reason had asserted itself. It didn’t matter how the change had come. It was enough that it had happened. She had decided at that point that she’d ask no questions, not of Adam nor of her sister when she saw her next, whenever that might be. She had no right to be jealous that Adam still loved Ruby. That was what she told herself a hundred times a day.

Adam swallowed the mouthful of meat roll in his mouth before he said, ‘Do I think it’ll happen? Maybe, but I have me doubts whether men like Jimmy Thomas or Walter Citrine will put their necks on the line for us miners if push comes to shove. They’ve not got the backbone to take on the government, in my opinion.’

‘So all this will be for nothing?’

Adam shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Who knows?’

Alice had been busy tucking into her dinner – meat roll was her favourite meal – and now as she scraped the last morsel from her plate, she said, ‘More please, Mam?’

Olive smiled. She loved to see the child eat well. ‘That’s all there is, Alice. Mam’ll get you a bit of stottie cake.’

‘Here.’ Adam tipped a good half of the meat roll left on his plate onto the child’s, and as Olive made a sound of protest in her throat, he said, ‘She’s a growing bairn, aren’t you, hinny?’ and Alice beamed at him.

Olive said nothing more but got up on the pretext of bringing the teapot to the table. There was a pain in her that had been growing over the last little while, and it wasn’t just that Alice seemed to have transferred the main source of her affection to Adam – although if she was honest that did hurt – but seeing Adam’s tenderness with the bairn caused a physical ache she couldn’t define deep inside.