There had been a quality to these last words that warned Walter he’d gone as far as he dare. He’d purposely chosen to talk to Adam whilst they were working. With thousands of tons of rock, coal and slate above them his brother couldn’t brush him aside and walk off as he’d done on numerous occasions in the last months, not when they were hemmed in like sardines in a can. Nevertheless, by the same token, if Adam got so riled up with him he made a mistake in what he was doing it could jeopardize not only his brother’s life but the rest of the men in the low narrow tunnels.

Walter swore again before muttering, ‘Have it your own way, I was only trying to help.’

Only trying to help. Adam wriggled forward, the heat and overwhelming humidity causing the sweat to run off him in rivulets. Walt and the others still had no real idea what they’d done that night two years ago, not even now. It was all right for them; they went home at the end of a shift to their bonny wives and families nice as you like, meeting up now and again as they’d always done down the pub for a jar or two where their chief topic of conversation would invariably centre around the coal owners locking men out and reducing wages and the rest of it, as if it mattered. As if anything mattered in this damn awful life he was trapped in. He didn’t give a monkey’s jig that working conditions were getting harder or the working day longer for less pay at the end of it. He wasn’t daft; he knew as well as the next man that coal owners like the Duke of Northumberland or the Bishop of Durham had gone straight back to their old ways after the Great War. They had no regard for the safety of the men they employed in their deathtraps and took no responsibility for the injuries and crippling disabilities suffered by miners every day of the week. But what good did it do to bleat on about it? Did Walt and Fred and Pete and the rest of them really think that strikes and the unions shouting the odds would get them anywhere?

Adam looked up, the light from his lamp shining on the roof of the tunnel he was inching down. All it would take was it caving in and his problems would be over. Before he had lost Ruby he’d used to have the occasional moment of blind panic when he was down the pit, his stomach flipping over so he felt like throwing up and his bowels turning to water. He’d had something to want to live for then, whereas now . . .