She turned to Olive, her voice low and deadly as she said, ‘You’ve made your bed and you’ll have to lie on it but it’ll be a bed of thorns, Olive Morgan. You think you’ve won now but you haven’t.’

The two sisters regarded each other for a moment more; Ruby as white as a sheet but with her eyes blazing, and Olive, the taller of the two, appearing even taller with her chin lifted and her thin mouth set in a grim line.

When Cissy said helplessly, ‘Please . . .’ it could have been directed at either of them, but it was enough to cause Ruby to swing round sharply and make for the hall. She ran up the stairs, not knowing what she was going to do or where she was going but only that she had to leave. Her suitcase was already partly packed with the clothes and things she had planned to take to her new home after the wedding celebrations here the next day, and now she added more to it, along with the money she had been saving for a little while to stock up the cupboards and buy bits and pieces for their new home. Adam had picked up the keys from the landlord two days ago and the second-hand furniture they had bought had been delivered that same afternoon, when Adam and his brothers had finished their shift at the colliery and could be present to put it in place. All her bottom-drawer linen and towels were there; they had even made the bed up that night two days ago amid much laughter and kissing. And then the next day Olive must have come to the colliery gates to wait for Adam . . .

She glanced at her wedding dress and the two bridesmaids’ dresses hanging on the back of the wardrobe door. If she’d had a knife in her hand she would have slashed the frocks to ribbons. They had been a labour of love, and she and Mrs Walton had spent long hours on the finer details of her bridal dress, every stitch, every little aspect perfect and beautifully fitted to her figure. Olive had said more than once that she thought Mrs Walton would have been better spending her money on something useful like curtains or bedspreads, rather than on finery that would be worn for a few hours and then packed away in mothballs. Stupid, Olive had called her, when very soon Adam could well be on half-time at the colliery or even laid off the way the country was going.

Well, she had been stupid all right, Ruby thought bitterly, but not about her dress.