He moved his head from side to side but he didn’t snap at her as she had expected. Instead of demanding she be quiet, he said softly, ‘I didn’t expect you of all people to be championing your sister.’

‘Why? I did her a great wrong, not the other way round. And – and I ruined your life too.’

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I might have agreed with you about that once, but things change. People change.’ His voice sounded tired as he went on, ‘I had to see her again to realize that the girl I loved is no more and the woman she’s become wouldn’t suit me any more than I would suit her. At first, after I saw her in the street that day, I told myself she’d had to change because of the circumstances you and I had thrust upon her, but I don’t think that’s it now. She was always a go-getter. We used to laugh about it, her and I, and she’d call me a stick-in-the-mud. But I don’t think we would have continued to laugh about our differences, Olive. Not for long, anyway. I looked at her that day in her fine clothes and talking different and I told myself she was just trying to ape her betters, but the thing is she always was better. Better than round here, I mean. She would never have needed me like I needed her. She would have been my world but I wouldn’t have been nearly enough for her.’

His world. Oh, that she could have inspired such love in him; she would gladly give the rest of her life for one day and night of him feeling like that about her. Through her misery, Olive managed to say evenly, ‘Be that as it may, what I did was unforgivable.’

‘No, it wasn’t, because Ruby forgave you and so do I. All right? And I wasn’t whiter than white, now, was I? And that night gave us Alice, don’t forget that. Can you honestly say you would change it if you could and not have the bairn?’

She shook her head, her throat too full to speak.