There was a silence, then Mary Poole’s body began to shake. At last she broke into sobs, her head bowed. Annie, eyes wide as if in horror at what they might be about to hear, laid a hand on Mary Poole’s shoulder. Margaret kept hold of her hands and they let her cry for a few moments until she was able to speak. No one else spoke or moved and the only sound in the room was her thin, broken weeping.

After several attempts, Mary at last broke into speech.

‘I can’t go on! I just can’t manage any more. I’d never’ve done it otherwise – I’d never!’ Another storm of crying quenched her for a few moments. Terrible possibilities flooded Margaret’s mind. Where was little Nellie? She had heard of the desperate actions of poor mothers, women pushed beyond the limits of their own strength and sanity. Surely Mary had not felt driven to such a desperate crime?

She looked round at Annie and was startled to see that her sister’s face was contorted with grief, her cheeks already wet with tears.

‘Mary,’ Margaret said, a sternness creeping into her voice which seemed to get through to the woman. ‘Where is Nellie? What have you done with her?’

Mary Poole stared back at her and her face filled with an enraged horror. ‘No! No – it ain’t that! You think I’ve gone and done ’er in, don’t you? Of course I ain’t! What d’you take me for? You think I did for Ada an’ all, don’t you and I never . . .’

‘No! Mary, no – of course we don’t think anything like that of you!’ Margaret said, horrified. ‘You mustn’t think that! Ada was sick. She died because she was poorly . . . But what about little Nellie – where is she?’

Mary quieted and withdrew her hands from Margaret’s, wringing them in her lap. She freed one for a moment to wipe her eyes in a hard, bitter gesture.

‘It’s only for a while – ’til I get on my feet. I can’t manage – no husband, only Lizzie with earnings, and me, if I do every day on them boxes and half the time I get ’em all wrong . . . And doing carding, but there’s no money in it – not really . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I thought, if I can just get proper work, like, we can get back on our feet, but with Nellie ’ere – and I got no one – no mom or nothing . . . I can’t do it. So I thought if I took ’er somewhere where they’d look after her for a bit for me . . . There’s a place up Erdington where they look after girls. So I went . . .’

She collapsed into tears then, softer, grief-stricken tears. Margaret could hear Lizzie and Annie sobbing somewhere behind her.