Over the following days, when Annie and Margaret came to help arrange the funeral, it soon became clear that the Pooles had no remaining funds.

‘I’m cast right down,’ Mary Poole sobbed. ‘We used to pay in, like, but I’ve lost that many babbies – four of ’em, between them that lived.’

Looking at Mary’s thin frame, Margaret could hardly believe that her body had been able to withstand any of it.

‘Dain’t we, Wilf?’ she appealed to her husband. ‘Penny fund for funerals . . . but . . .’ She shook her head and lowered it hopelessly.

The sisters looked at Wilf Poole. He nodded. Margaret could see that he had once been a nice-looking man, with a job and a family that was managing. His lips had the look of once having smiled, but they never smiled now. He must be about thirty-five, she thought, shocked. He looked fifty, his body bent, the greasy brown hair fading to grey.

‘But we ain’t got nothing now. I’ll ’ave to ’ave ’er buried on the parish.’

‘No, Mrs Poole, we’ll help you,’ Annie insisted quietly.

Margaret was struck by the way she spoke to Mary Poole. Annie had always had a rather commanding, ‘we know best’ sort of tone before. But now she spoke humbly, gently. She reached out for a moment and touched Mary Poole’s trembling hand. ‘There’s my wages . . . And my uncle will help, I’m sure, won’t he, Margaret?’

Margaret caught sight of Den’s face, watching them. She saw a look of intense, desperate feeling. Seeing this family, she felt her heart might actually melt with sorrow.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to hold back her tears. ‘Of course.’

The funeral was of the most simple kind: one small carriage in which Mary and Wilf, Ivy and Nellie rode to the general cemetery at Key Hill. Den walked there with Margaret and Annie.

The Pooles had very little in the way of clothes fit for the occasion, but it was a cold, windswept Monday morning and all were covered by shabby coats. Den, in a pair of boots from Georgie’s young brother-in-law, walked straight-backed into the cemetery, silent, not looking at anyone, but sticking close at Margaret’s side.

They had made sure that Ada had her own grave, beside her siblings. As the chill wind blew, Ada was laid to rest in her bare coffin and the minister prayed over the tiny grave. Margaret longed to kneel and take the little girl’s suffering brother in her arms. But Den was forbidding, his face flint hard as he watched his gaunt, heartbroken parents bury another of their children.