On the day that the colliery opened, Adam joined the other miners gathered at the gates. It was a bitterly cold day and sleet was falling, the sky leaden and dark. There was a list of names on the noticeboard on the gate beside the terms that had been up there for seven long months and which they’d fought so hard and suffered so much to change. If your name was there, it meant you had a job. If it wasn’t, it meant the owners were having their final revenge on those they saw as troublemakers and agitators. Adam’s name was there, along with his brothers’. His father’s wasn’t. The five of them stood together, staring at the board, his father’s mouth working as though he was chewing something. John hadn’t been the same since the night he had been so badly injured. He had barely known what day it was for some time, and when he had finally come to himself he had been subdued and distant, often not speaking for hours on end.

Now as John stared at the list he shrugged. ‘Thought as much.’

‘I’m sorry, Da.’ Adam shook his head. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘When did fair have anything to do with it?’

‘You an’ Mam’ll be all right,’ Walt said quietly. ‘We’ll all see to that.’

‘You’ve got your own families to take care of.’

‘Aye, an’ you an’ Mam are part of ’em. We’ll all put in a bit till they take you back on, and they will sooner or later. You’re one of the best hewers in the pit, everyone knows that.’

Adam had been reading the list. There were a lot of skilled men like his father who were excellent workers whose names were absent because of their political beliefs and the way they’d spoken up in the past. He swallowed hard. Those that could go back would – families were depending on them – but if they’d thought they had it bad before it was going to get a darn sight worse. The owners had them by the short and curlies, that was for sure. They wouldn’t be able to wipe their noses without risking the sack.

The four brothers stood together and watched their father shuffle off down the street. Adam had never thought of his da as an old man; John was over sixty, it was true, and his life down the pit since he was a lad of thirteen had marked his body, but his zest for life and belligerence and pride of himself as the head of a family of five lads had made him seem ageless. But not any more.