By the time she had left them, refusing Daniel’s pleas to accompany them to the Picture Theatre at the junction of Lynwood Terrace and Westgate Road and then later for a meal and drink at a public house, her head was aching and she was acutely disturbed. Bridget had been in when she had got back to Mrs Duffy’s and after knocking on the Irish girl’s door she had asked her what she knew about Daniel Bell. Bridget had told her Daniel wasn’t one of the crowd she and her pals hung about with, and that since meeting him Ellie had had little to do with her and the others, preferring to be with Daniel, and Daniel’s friend Howard and his girlfriend, a lass called Daisy.

Ruby had suspected Bridget knew more about Daniel than she was saying but no amount of coaxing could get anything more from her, and she’d had to admit defeat. Later that night, when Ellie arrived home the worse for drink, they’d had their first row about Daniel. Since then she had met him again once when he had been waiting outside the workhouse when Ellie had left one evening. He’d been as slick and smooth-talking as before but this time Ruby had detected an edge of hostility beneath the urbane front and had guessed, rightly, that he knew her opinion of him.

Now, recalling Daniel’s chilling gaze as she had walked away from the pair of them that night to catch the tram, Ruby said quietly, ‘Ellie, however many times Daniel and I met we wouldn’t get on, but that wouldn’t matter an iota if he had your best interests at heart.’

‘He does.’

‘Not if he’s suggesting you live with him.’

Ellie’s face tightened. ‘I’m not like you, Ruby, and frankly I don’t want to be. All your reading at the library and taking night courses to better yourself and designing and making your clothes and that would bore me stiff, and I can’t see how you care so much about the suffrage movement either. All those meetings you go to and them talking on and on – I mean, who cares that there’s a couple of women MPs in Parliament now? And they’re both “Lady”s, not ordinary women like us. The upper class couldn’t give a monkey’s about the working class, be they men or women, that’s the truth of it. Life’s passing you by and I don’t intend to let it pass me by.’

‘Ellie—’

‘No, I mean it. I love Daniel and he loves me, whatever you say. I know he does. And we will get married soon. He’s said so. When – when he’s got time.’