Lizzie glanced anxiously at her mother. ‘We’ve none – ’til I get my wages or Den sells some firewood. Mom does outwork, see, for the button factory . . .’ She glanced at the cards and misshapen-looking boxes on the table. ‘But she’s not been able to.’

Annie felt despair wash over her. There were a hundred questions she wanted to ask about how they had come to these straits, but the most urgent thing seemed to be to get something for the children to eat.

‘If we go down to Mrs Wills on the corner, she might let us have a bit of something, I ’spect,’ Lizzie said doubtfully. ‘We’re a bit behind with paying ’er, though . . .’

Nellie, the little one, let out another shriek of hunger and frustration and Annie drew her resolve together.

‘Let’s go,’ she said.

Everything was swathed in the sulphurous, evil-smelling fog. Mrs Wills’s little shop was only a few yards away, the light inside a blur of yellow guiding them to the entrance.

‘Don’t you have gas in your house?’ Annie asked, thinking of the candle.

‘Oh, yes – we just ain’t got mantles,’ Lizzie said. Her voice was still faint and sick and she looked curled in on herself. Annie could see the effort it had cost her to come out again.

Mrs Wills was sitting, a mighty form, behind the narrow counter in her cluttered shop. She wore a huge brown shawl draped right over her head and from under its shadow peered a jowelly face, the eyes hard and calculating. The gas lamp popped away in the middle of the tiny room and Annie saw every kind of thing for sale, crowded on to shelves behind the shop’s intimidating guardian.

‘Evenin’, Mrs Wills,’ Lizzie said. Annie could hear that she was trying to get into the woman’s good books.

Mrs Wills got up off her stool behind the counter and made a grudging ‘huh’ noise. Close to her was a loaf of bread that must have been sitting there all day by the look of it – if not more than one day.

‘You come to pay your bill, Lizzie Poole?’ she said. ‘That mother of yours owes me more than anyone in the book.’

‘Not today – but I’ll get my wages on Friday,’ Lizzie pleaded. ‘Please could yer let us have summat – there’s nothing for the babby . . .’

Mrs Wills folded her arms. ‘What – more on the strap?’

Lizzie was nodding, looking sick and wretched.

‘Could you please let us have that loaf?’ Annie said, moving round in front of Lizzie. ‘And anything else that you could see your way to advancing us? Tea, and a little jam, perhaps?’

Mrs Wills looked outraged. ‘Who’re you?’ she said rudely.

‘I am a friend of the family,’ Annie said. ‘I can guarantee that your bill will be paid this week in full – but we do need some things for tonight.’