Maggie obviously recognised Kitty in the same instant and stood quite still as if she had been turned to stone.

‘Maggie.’ Kitty was breathless. ‘I thought it was you. What are you doing here?’

Maggie shrugged as she scraped the toe of her boot along the cobblestones. It was then that Kitty saw how red and puffy her eyes were and realised that she’d been crying.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked, then berated herself for being a fool. Of course there was something wrong! A blind man on a galloping horse could see that. She glanced around for a sign of Mr and Mrs Dawes before going on, ‘Are you alone?’

Maggie remained stubbornly silent but even standing away from her Kitty could hear her stomach rumbling. ‘Have you eaten today?’ she asked warily as she placed her hand on Maggie’s arm.

The girl sprang away from her as if she had been scalded and pressed herself against the wall of the warehouse they were standing beside.

‘What’s it to you?’ she cried hoarsely, suddenly wondering if this had been such a good idea. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’

‘No, I won’t.’ Kitty could be stubborn too. ‘Not till you tell me what’s going on.’

Maggie looked at her suspiciously for a moment before muttering, ‘I’ve run away, if you must know! And don’t try to persuade me to go back because I won’t. I’d rather die than go back there.’ She shuddered. ‘I … I came here because I didn’t know where else to go, although I doubted that I would find you.’

‘All right, all right,’ Kitty soothed. ‘But just tell me … have you somewhere to stay?’

For a moment, she thought Maggie was going to ignore her but then the other girl slowly shook her head as tears trickled down her cheeks.

‘N-not yet.’

‘And have you any money?’

Another shake of the head was her answer.

‘Right then. First off, let’s get you something to eat,’ Kitty said in a voice that brooked no argument, and taking Maggie’s arm firmly she led her over to the stall that sold jacket potatoes. When she had purchased the largest they had, filled with cheese, she handed it to Maggie and the girl gobbled it down greedily. Kitty then bought her a mug of steaming tea and when Maggie had drunk that too she looked slightly better.

‘Right, now we need to find you somewhere to stay,’ Kitty said thoughtfully and Maggie started to cry again.

‘Why would you do that for me? I was horrible to you when we lived at Treetops together.’

Kitty smiled. ‘We were just little children back then,’ she reminded her. ‘And until you went to live with the Dawes family we had been brought up together as sisters. I missed you terribly for a time when you left, so did Ben.’

Maggie looked amazed and seemed to relax a little. ‘Believe it or not, I missed you too,’ she said. ‘We heard that you’d come to live in Chelsea with your real mother. It must be nice for you.’