‘Oh, Mrs Walton, I never imagined – I mean, I can’t believe –’ Ruby took a deep breath as she tried to pull herself together. She reached out and took the old lady’s hands, and there were fresh tears in her eyes when she said, ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I would have loved to continue here with you. I’ve always felt that you’re like family, and you’ve been so good to me, but . . .’

She left the sentence unfinished and it was Vera who softly said, ‘But you can’t stay. I understand, I understand. But wherever you go, you will keep in touch, won’t you? And we could perhaps see each other occasionally? You are very dear to me. Write to me as soon as you are settled so I know you’re safe, won’t you? Where will you go?’

‘Newcastle way, I think.’ She could lose herself in a big city and get work of some kind. ‘But first I have to go and tell Ellie what’s happened.’ Ellie had been due to arrive at the house mid-morning to help her get ready for the wedding at one o’clock. ‘Can I leave everything here while I go?’

‘Of course, dear.’

It was Ellie’s mother who opened the door to her knock. The big, blowsy woman with her enormous breasts and greasy grey hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head stared at her for a moment, her eyes bleary from last night’s drinking, before recognition dawned. ‘Ruby?’

‘Hello, Mrs Wood. Could I have a word with Ellie?’ For a moment Ruby’s misery was secondary to her fight not to reveal what the smell emanating from inside the house was doing to her stomach. Although she and Ellie had been friends from their first day at school, she’d only visited the Woods’ place a couple of times and that had been more than enough. It had been filthy and flea-ridden with mice droppings everywhere.

Ellie’s father was a trimmer at the docks, a burly brute of a man who used his fists on his wife and children whenever he was in the house, and Mrs Wood had a bairn every year as regular as clockwork. Ellie was the seventh of the thirteen who had survived the violence and neglect, and since leaving school and getting a job in a bakery shop she made sure she was at home as little as possible, doing extra shifts and often working fifteen-hour days. Anything was better than being around her mam and da, as she’d said on more than one occasion to Ruby, and by getting home after eleven o’clock each night she could be sure they were blind drunk and dead to the world in their bed in the front room.