Ruby felt as though the last words had pierced her through. She stared at the woman on the bandstand, a hundred and one emotions causing her head to whirl.

She knew she had been slowly changing in many ways since she had left Sunderland and come to Newcastle, but suddenly half-formed thoughts and feelings had crystallized into one solid, inescapable fact.

If she had married Adam, sooner or later she would have become unhappy and she would have made him unhappy too.

She stood quite still as Lady Russell concluded her talk, not moving through the storm of applause that followed, even to clap like everyone around her. Her mind was grappling with the knowledge that had been thrust upon her.

A large part of her didn’t want to acknowledge it was true, she realized, because to do so would effectively let Olive off the hook to some extent. And why should her sister get off scot-free when she had done her uppermost to wreck her life, and without a word of contrition? It wasn’t fair. But – and she couldn’t escape the fact – it was true all the same.

She shut her eyes for a moment but she couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Her heart thudding violently, she opened her eyes again and stared blindly ahead. Because she had loved Adam she had wanted to be his wife from when she could remember, but she had always known they felt differently about lots of things. Adam was a product of his upbringing and set in his ways, even as a child. When she’d broached the matter of her continuing to work for Mrs Walton after they were wed and he had agreed, he’d also made it clear it was a concession on his part and she had been grateful for it. As far as Adam was concerned, men went out to work and brought home the money and their wives raised the bairns at home. Once she’d had their first child she would have been destined to remain as a housewife for the rest of her days. And she knew now that wouldn’t have been enough. Of necessity she had been forced to stand on her own two feet over the last two years and in so doing certain aspects of her personality had come into prominence. If she’d married Adam, she would still have developed in the same way, she realized that now, but the growth of the fledgling ideas and principles would have been slower to gain maturity. And he wouldn’t have agreed with her on some of the things that had become so vitally important.