The wind was blowing so strongly the next day when Margaret set out with Annie’s dinner that she had to clutch the basin under one arm and hold her hat on with the other. Waiting outside Masters, Hogg & Co. close by her was a pale, thin young girl with ginger hair, holding a bundle clutched tightly against her. Margaret had seen her there before over the past days. The girl could only have been thirteen or so. She cringed against the factory wall, wearing no coat, her ankles bare above a pair of worn brown lace-up shoes. Her head was half covered by a shawl and she was turned partly to the wall, trying to shelter from the wind. From her arms came the anguished cries of a very small baby. The girl kept jiggling from side to side, trying to quiet the little one.

‘Why don’t you come and wait here with me, dear?’ Margaret said, beckoning her to a corner where the wall of the factory entrance extended further. ‘There’s a bit more shelter.’

The girl turned a thin, narrow-eyed face towards Margaret with a mistrustful expression. But she was shivering and looked so wretched that she moved over to where Margaret was standing.

‘Is that your baby brother or sister?’

The girl nodded, still shaking the infant about to try and settle her. ‘M’sister. Nancy.’

‘I’ve seen you before. Does your mother work here?’

The girl nodded. ‘I ’ave to bring ’er so’s Mom can give ’er a feed off ’er titty – in the break, like.’

Margaret felt a pang of desperation for the girl and her mother. What a pitiless, endless struggle it all was. At least the woman had work, she thought. But then there was all the other labour at home, the endless physical toil of bearing and raising children. For a moment she was filled with horror at the thought of marriage and all it entailed.

She heard the dinner bell ring and moments later a tough, harassed-looking woman, her ginger hair screwed up at the back, emerged from the stream of other workers.

‘Floss?’ She rushed up to the girl. ‘Come on – give ’er over, quick. My blouse is soakin’.’ She pulled the howling baby into her arms and they hurried off along the street.

‘Maggs?’ Annie appeared then, hugging herself in the freezing wind. Her gaze followed Margaret’s, after the woman and the girl.

‘I don’t know how some of these women do it,’ Annie said sadly. ‘I really don’t.’

‘Here.’ Margaret handed over the basin. ‘How’s Lizzie today?’

‘Not too bad. Says her mother’s past the worst, thank goodness. I’ll go round tonight. I’ll come home for tea first, though. I don’t want to keep inconveniencing Aunt Hatt.’