As one, they walked through the colliery gates and into the yard where the deputy eyed them up and down. Most of the deputies Adam liked – they were just miners like him, he’d told himself in the past whenever one of them had docked a lad’s wage or argued the toss about something or other – but this one, Norman Boyce, was a nasty bit of work and a boss’s man to the soul of him.

‘The Gilbert crew.’ The deputy smiled mockingly. ‘Nice to see you, lads.’ Both the look on his face and the tone of his voice told Adam they were in for a rough ride. And so it proved. His father had been a thorn in this man’s side for years and now Boyce wasn’t satisfied in his victory over him; he intended to kick all the Gilberts’ backsides.

Walt was as skilled a hewer as their father and all four of them had been doing face work before the strike; it was where the money was and every miner knew it. Now Boyce had set the four of them doing labouring work at seventeen shillings and fourpence a week. He knew they couldn’t refuse and what was more they had to appear grateful for being taken back in any capacity.

It was a long day. The four of them fetched and carried, passed stuff to the skilled men working at the face and tidied up after them. They shovelled the pit ponies’ dung, cleaned things, and generally did the work they’d done as green young lads fresh from the schoolyard. Each one of them knew they were being punished for being their father’s sons, but if they were ever going to be set on at the face again and earn real money they had to keep their mouths shut and bide their time.

Adam’s shoulders were bowed as he walked home later that day. The earlier sleet had turned into snow and a keen north-east wind whipped the flakes into his face, but his physical discomfort was nothing to what he was feeling inside. He felt like nowt, less than nowt after kowtowing to that scum Boyce all day. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to stand it but he’d have to, there was no other option.

When he opened the back door and walked into the kitchen the warmth and the smell of cooking hit him at the same time. They’d had no coal that morning and no money to buy any with, and the only food in the house had been a pan of two-day old broth made with scrag ends and vegetables that had been on the turn. They’d had it cold the night before and it had tasted like something you wouldn’t expect a dog to eat.