She had broken the news to Mabel that she was moving out of the house at the weekend, and although Mabel had tried to persuade her to stay until all the work was completed, offering to waive the rent, Ruby wouldn’t budge from her plans. She would be able to work as late as she liked and rise whenever she wanted and the thought of being in her own home was heady. Besides which – and now the glow that the joy of ownership had brought to her face faded – she needed to fill every moment, to be so exhausted she could fall into bed each night and sleep. Grief for Ellie, and to a lesser extent her father, although she kept telling herself he was still alive and could go on for years, kept her tossing and turning for a good while most nights. Now that she had left the workhouse laundry and was her own boss, so to speak, she intended to pay another visit home within the next few days. What she would encounter she didn’t know because since the TUC had called off the strike a couple of weeks ago the embattled miners had voted to fight on alone. Her mother wrote to her every week now she had her Newcastle address, and in her last letter she’d said Adam had been round to see her da the night before and said he and the other miners were preparing for a long, hard and bitter fight. The government had deemed the strike unlawful, which meant the workers could claim no relief, not even from their own union funds, and the Ministry of Health had already told workhouse guardians throughout the country that it was now a matter of law that no able-bodied man was to be given any money or vouchers of any kind. The Co-op’s headquarters had told all their branches to give no credit as they hadn’t been paid back from the 1921 lockout yet, and little corner-end shops could only give tick for so long before they went out of business themselves. It was up to the lodges in every district of every coalfield to look after their own people, Adam had said, and to raise money the best they could. There was no doubt in any miner’s mind that the strike had become a war against us and ‘them’, them being the government, the middle and upper classes and even the higher end of the working class.