‘They’ll have to look after themselves. We need to get Da home.’ And Ronnie too, by the look of it, although Adam didn’t voice this. His brother was covered in their father’s blood and where the red wasn’t showing stark and vivid, his face was as white as a sheet and he was clearly in shock.

By the time they reached their parents’ house John had been violently sick twice and had regained consciousness enough to keep up a steady animal-like moaning. This sound, together with the sight of her husband covered in blood, vomit and horse faeces, was enough to send Adam’s normally unflappable mother into a panic. After stripping his clothes off him down to his vest and long johns, Adam and Fred cleaned their father up the best they could and put him to bed. He had a lump the size of an egg on his forehead and was mumbling a load of gibberish, both eyes were swollen shut and blood was still oozing from his nose although it wasn’t streaming as it had done at first.

Ronnie had the skitters and had already been in and out to the privy umpteen times when Walt and Pete came in a while later, both bloodied and bruised but two of the walking wounded, unlike some of their comrades. According to Walt, a number of men had been arrested and taken away, and still more carted off to hospital and – Walt had added grimly – to the morgue if the sight of them was anything to go by.

It had been a disaster from start to finish.

The streets were quiet and deserted when Adam walked home some time later, and as he walked he knew he had made up his mind about one thing. No more marches, no more picketing, not for him at least. He wouldn’t be a scab, but neither would he put himself in the way of harm and leave Alice without a da. It was as simple as that. When this damn strike would end he didn’t know but somehow he’d have to see that his family got through. He owed Olive and the bairn that.

Chapter Twenty

Adam looked down at his plate. He had been expecting a bowl of the dirty-looking water that went under the name of fish soup that he and Olive had eaten for the last three days since he had found some fish and vegetable scraps under a stall at the market. He had managed to snare a rabbit a few days before after walking four miles into the country and waiting for nearly twenty-four hours in the bitter cold before one took the bait, and that had been eked out with potatoes each day for Alice. But this wasn’t rabbit.