‘I shall miss you too,’ she told Ben. ‘But I shall write to you, and as soon as I’m settled you could perhaps come for a visit. London isn’t so very far away on the train, is it?’

‘I suppose not,’ he answered, then surprised her when he rose abruptly and said, ‘Right, well, I’d best get on. I’ve work to do and I dare say you have a lot of packing to get on with so I’ll leave you to it and see you later.’

‘He’s hurting, lass,’ Dora Cotton said as she saw the distress on Kitty’s face. ‘He’s pleased for you – we all will be – but it won’t stop the pain of seeing you go.’

Kitty gave her a quick hug, then made her way upstairs. She would need to sort out what she wanted to take with her and there seemed no sense in delaying. This time tomorrow she would be gone, possibly for good. It was a sobering thought, for although she was eager to meet her natural mother she was sad to be leaving Treetops and Sunday and Tom, who had been like parents to her – the best any child could have wished for.

After seeing Miss Fox out and into the car, with George at the wheel to drive her to her digs for tonight, Tom went back to the sitting room where he found Sunday sitting with tears streaming down her face. She found it strange that at one time she would never allow herself to cry, since she had learned at a very young age that tears got her nowhere in the workhouse, and yet recently it seemed to be all she had done – but only when Tom wasn’t there to see her. Today, however, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

Tom tried to take her in his arms to comfort her, but she shrugged him off and moved away. He sighed. She even kept to her own side of the bed now instead of cuddling into him as she had used to, and he wondered if things would ever go back to the way they were before they had discovered that Ben was his son.

‘She’ll be all right,’ he assured her. ‘Kitty is tougher than she looks and we’ll keep in close touch with her. She can always come home if things don’t work out in London.’

‘Of course.’ Sunday answered him as if she were talking to a mere acquaintance and Tom’s frustration grew although he didn’t say anything.

‘I must go and sort out some luggage for her,’ Sunday said then, after drying her cheeks on a scrap of lace handkerchief. ‘It wouldn’t do for her to arrive at her mother’s with shabby bags. I shall give her the two I bought last year.’

He didn’t respond. Sunday clearly didn’t expect him to, and then she left the room without another word, leaving Tom with a heavy heart. They had lost poor little Maggie, and now they were about to lose Kitty, the girl he had loved since she had come into his care. These days, he had seriously begun to wonder if he had lost his wife too.