‘You’re a good woman, Olive.’ And when she went to protest, he held up his hand. ‘You’ve put up with me without complaint for one thing,’ he added in a lighter tone, aiming to bring a smile to her face, and when she continued to stare at him, her eyes expressing her pain and something else, something that caused him to become hot with surprise and embarrassment, he suddenly found himself out of his depth. She was fond of him. More than fond. After all he’d put her through and the way he had used her in the bedroom, worse than a man would use one of the whores down at the docks, she loved him. He didn’t know what to do. Strangely, because never in a month of Sundays would he have expected to feel this way, he had the desire to comfort her. Just that, comfort her.

He stood up, moving round the table and then drawing her to her feet and into his arms, and when her thin, taut body relaxed against him and her head buried itself in his shoulder, he murmured, ‘We’re a team, lass, you and I an’ the bairn.’ He couldn’t say he loved her because it wasn’t true, but as he held his wife to him it dawned on him that he didn’t know himself at all; perhaps no man did. Four years ago he would have sworn on oath that Ruby was the right one for him and that in losing her his life was over. And he had stubbornly held on to that belief, refusing to consider anything else, rejecting his daughter and causing this woman in his arms untold misery. But now, now he knew that if Ruby was to walk in here this minute and ask him to go away with her, he’d say no. And mean it. What did that say about him? He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand anything these days, but one thing he was certain of. He cared about Olive and he wanted to make her as happy as he could, her and the bairn.