Margaret and Annie unpacked their modest number of belongings. A light coat and spare dress, a skirt, blouse and underwear, a face cloth and a nightdress each; a cake of soap, and for cleaning their teeth strips of willow and a little pot of salt.

‘We look very down-at-heel compared with Aunt, don’t we?’ Margaret said, wistfully holding up her grey dress with its frayed hem. Their boots were quite literally down-at-heel. There were so few occasions when they could go and buy cloth or find time to get their shoes mended. Life at home was full of the stern purpose of God’s work, with no fripperies.

Annie glanced round. ‘I s’pose so, yes,’ she said, shrugging. Clothes had never been high on Annie’s list of priorities.

Margaret had brought letter-writing things and her little Bible with onion-skin pages. Annie had brought her favourite book, The Mill on the Floss. Modestly they turned away from each other to wash in the candlelight. The familiarity of the bedtime ritual was soothing in this strange place, the feel of the warm water against their cheeks, the folding back of the sheet . . .

Yet the room seethed with things unsaid: a continuation of the atmosphere that had grown between them during these last days.

Margaret stood plaiting her thick hair. Annie could never be bothered. The brass bedstead creaked as each of them climbed on to it. Margaret started to pull the heavy bedclothes and gold-coloured eiderdown over them.

‘What’re you doing?’ Annie threw them off irritably. ‘You can’t put all that on us – we’ll cook!’

‘Oh, yes,’ Margaret said. ‘Sorry.’ She sounded dazed. Annie, lying with her hair spread on the pillow, looked sorry for being so sharp.

‘We should say our prayers,’ Margaret said, an edge of desperation to her voice.

‘Just the Lord’s Prayer,’ Annie said. ‘We haven’t got Father breathing down our necks here.’

‘Annie,’ Margaret said in a desperate tone. ‘Don’t talk like that, please.’

They recited it together, but it brought neither of them peace or stillness. A moment later Margaret, staring up at the cracked distemper on the ceiling, said crossly, ‘What on earth were you talking about getting a job for?’

‘That’s what I want to do!’ Annie sprang up to lean on one elbow. Her eyes blazed at Margaret as they had so many times in their lives. ‘I must go out and work! Lots of women have jobs here – didn’t we see them, in the street? And anyway, if we’re to do the Lord’s bidding, we have to be fearless as lions.’

‘But I thought . . .’ Margaret sounded amazed. Annie was always the rebel at home, the one chafing against their father’s rigidity. It was Margaret who had been his disciple. ‘I thought you didn’t want . . . You were always talking about getting away.’