They woke Den for just long enough for him to wolf down some bread and butter and the warm milk. He was asleep again almost before he reached the floor in front of the fire where they settled him with a pillow and a thick old eiderdown.

‘His poor mother must be worried to death,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘But I’ll tell you summat – he’s not leaving here before he’s had a bath.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘He stinks like a midden. And I’ll see if I can cobble together something else for him to wear.’

Margaret rose early to find Den still fast asleep, curled on his side in a tight, cowering position. She knelt to look into his face, breathing in the bitter coal smell and the sharp, animal odour of the boy. His lips were parted slightly. His face, tide-marked with grime, had relaxed into sleep and he looked, for once, like a child.

‘So this is the little urchin, is it?’ Uncle Eb appeared behind her, overall already on. He looked at Margaret. ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head, though with affection. ‘You wenches.’

‘Aunt Hatt says he’s got to have a bath,’ she said, getting to her feet.

Eb chuckled. ‘I should think so, by the look of the lad.’

‘There’s water on already – for tea first.’

‘Bath?’ Den said, looking completely horrified.

‘No bath, no breakfast,’ Aunt Hatt said, looming, hands on hips. ‘And I’ve got bacon.’

At this, Den could hardly get his clothes off quickly enough. Within an hour he was bathed, reclothed in old garments of Eb and Georgie’s, legs and sleeves rolled, and had his hands full of thick wedges of bread and butter with fried bacon pressed between them.

Margaret told him that she would take him home.

‘Were you out looking for your pa, Den?’ she asked as they walked to Pope Street. She was carrying a basin of soup that Aunt Hatt had insisted she take to Mary Poole, ‘the poor woman’. Margaret had smiled at her – Aunt Hatt just could not help being kind, whatever she thought about it all.

Den nodded his head, then shook it as if in denial. His face was hidden under his cap, the one piece of clothing of his own that he had refused to give up. Margaret, her heart aching for him in all his sadness and confusion, wanted to reach down and take his hand. But the boy was shut in on himself – a hard little man again – and she knew he would shake her off.

As they crossed the mucky yard in Pope Street, the Pooles’ neighbour Mrs Blount and two other women were out with a mangle, near the brew house. Steam was curling out of the little building from the hot copper of water and they had their sleeves rolled for wash day.