“They would, but bricklayers are building a wall around the plate. You’ll see that heap of bricks—that will become the wall. When the plate descends, it takes the wall with it. That provides the surface for the shaft where lifts will take men down into the mine, eventually.”

“What a hard job. You must be glad to be on the surface.”

“I am that, missus. I’d hate to be in the bowels of the earth. This pit’s being sunk so deep that we’ll be fighting Australian miners for the coal.”

“Thanks for the explanation. I’ll take a look.”

“Aye, you do that, and listen out for the cries of the orphans and waifs and strays.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Bluebell Children’s Home stood nearby for a century and more. It was a lucky place for some. They’d be sorry to see it come to this.”

“What does this have to do with the home?”

Gertrude waved for me to join her.

He turned back to his horses. “Her ladyship summons.”

He had not answered me. “When was the home demolished?”

“The minute the young uns left, and just in time for the contractors to gather up the stone blocks and bricks from the house to use again for the shaft wall.”

“The subsidence didn’t make any difference then, to the sinking of a new pit?”

“Don’t know nowt about subsidence, not round here.” He turned away, to talk to two men who were tipping buckets of earth and debris onto a cart.

I noticed a small, blood-red toy, a wooden engine, lying by a rock. It seemed such an incongruous juxtaposition that I took a photograph.

I wondered where it came from, and whether one of the men might want to take it home. The farrier I had spoken to earlier was now waiting with the horse and cart.

I went across. “Look, here’s a little engine. Do you have a boy who might like it?”

He took it from me, holding it this way and that. “Whoever made it did a good job, and painted it too.”

This might be the engine that Mr. Arkwright had made for Alec Taylor.

My guide pointed to a space between two boulders, where a small heap of items had been set aside. There was a child’s shoe, a whip and top, a toy car and a doll with one arm.

The sight of these items made me feel uneasy. “What did happen to the children?”

I had heard something from Gertrude, and from Mrs. Arkwright, but this man also seemed in the know.

He glanced across at Gertrude who was speaking to the engineer. “Perhaps the Pied Piper came and led them into the slag heaps. They were gone before the demolition men came. Before you knew it, the ground was cleared.”

“But where did they go, and so quickly that their toys were left behind?”