He moved his mouth as though he was going to answer but no words came out, and as she stared at him she knew she had hit the nail on the head. In those minutes, when he had been with Olive, all that had mattered was the needs of his body. Hate spiralled up in her for both of them and it equalled her love for him, enabling her to say, ‘If she’s expecting a baby then you’ll have to marry her. Father McHaffie will see to that.’

‘I can’t, I won’t.’ His voice throaty, he pleaded, ‘You love me, Ruby. You’ve always loved me. I know we couldn’t stay round here but we can go somewhere else, down south maybe, and get married there. She’s brought this on herself – she’ll have to weather the storm.’

Weather the storm? He knew as well as she did what Olive’s life would be like if she was left to face this alone. They would crucify her, all the neighbours and folk hereabouts, the self-constituted avengers who would hide their pleasure at Olive’s persecution under a banner of righteousness. And although at the moment she would like nothing more than to leave Olive to her fate, there was her mam and da to consider. The shame of his daughter giving birth to a bastard would kill her da, and that’s what Olive’s child would be if Adam didn’t marry her. There would still be avid gossip and speculation because of the circumstances and some mud would stick, but the cloak of respectability that Adam’s ring on Olive’s finger would bring would stop the worst of the hounding and give the child protection.

This last thought caused Ruby to say, ‘And what of the baby, your baby?’

He waved his hand as though that was of no consequence, and his next words confirmed it. ‘It’s hers, not mine. She did this on purpose to trap me, don’t you see? She’ll manage, she’ll have to. There’s your mam an’ da, or if they throw her out there’s the workhouse.’

Of all that had passed between them, this shocked Ruby the most. The workhouse, that huge bogeyman of bricks and mortar that hovered over the poor from birth to death and was the thing of nightmares – he would see his child brought up in those terrible confines?

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do, I do. Please, Ruby, listen to me. We’re young, we can make a good life for ourselves down south and we needn’t ever come back here. Everything’s better down there anyway – we’d be in clover, I know we would. I’ll make this up to you, I swear it. We’ll forget all this in time as long as we’re together.’