It was on the tip of her tongue to speak. To say something casually, wryly perhaps, like, ‘I wonder if Ruby’s new friends are doing their bit then,’ but as she looked at Adam’s troubled face the words died before they were voiced. She knew he was worried to death about the outcome of the strike. It was clear now that the government, and in particular Churchill and his cronies, had been setting up the O.M.S., the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, for a long time, probably since the 1921 lockout, in fact. The stockpiling that had gone on was evidence that they had anticipated a national strike and had been organized and waiting to spring into action. Adam and her da and others were sure that it had always been Churchill’s intention to let the strike happen so he could show the working class who was boss once and for all, and keep them on their knees for ever. She didn’t know about that, she was no politician, but if Adam said it, it was good enough for her.

And so she now said, ‘I was round Mam’s today and Da said Churchill’s brought out a new newspaper called The British Gazette and he’s saying whatever he likes in it.’

Adam nodded. ‘Aye, I heard about it from one of the lads. There’ll be nothing bad about the government in it and nothing good about us, you can be sure of that.’

They were sitting in the kitchen and it was dark outside, Alice had long since been in bed. Olive was seated at the scrubbed table doing some darning by the light of an oil lamp, and Adam was reclining in a battered armchair in front of the range, his slippered feet on the fender. It was a scene that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago, and this was at the forefront of Olive’s mind as Adam continued to talk about the ins and outs of the strike. He and his brothers had congregated at his mam’s that afternoon to chew things over together with their father, and he had taken Alice with him, saying Fred was going to bring his three bairns and it would be nice for Alice to play with her cousins. Fred’s wife was overdue with her fourth and as big as a house.

For practically the first time since she’d had Alice, apart from once or twice when she had left the child with her mother for an hour or so when the weather had been atrocious and she’d needed to do some shopping, she had been on her own and she had hated it. It had seemed an eternity until she had heard them in the yard, Alice giggling on Adam’s shoulders, and she had felt ridiculously tearful when Adam had walked in.