‘She can’t know about her brother,’ Trevalyn continued. ‘What a welcome.’

The two men stood in a silence punctuated by much cursing from the men installing the boiler.

‘You know Penrose’s father was one of the biggest mine owners in Cornwall?’ Trevalyn said.

‘No.’

‘Fell on hard times. No one wanted tin any more.’ Trevalyn shrugged. ‘Many a Cornishman found his way to these shores, me included. Penrose was a good boss.’ He glanced at Alec. ‘Not saying you ain’t a good boss.’

‘Thank you,’ Alec said in a voice dripping irony.

Suddenly the boiler tipped to the side, causing one of the men to jump out of the way to avoid his foot being crushed. Alec lunged forward to help steady the machine. It wavered but fell no further and the men finally manoeuvred it back in place.

‘Take a break,’ Alec said, and the workers stepped back from the heavy piece of machinery, mopping their brows.

A crib room had been cut into the side of the plant room, furnished with a rough table and bench. The men laughed and chatted among themselves as they opened lunch pails. Many of the miners were Welsh or Cornish like Trevalyn and those with wives gladly shared griddle cakes and pasties with their less fortunate single mates.

‘Come and join us,’ David Morgan called to Alec, in the singsong accent of the Welsh. ‘You’ve not lived till you’ve tasted me wife’s baking.’

Alec drew up a stool at the end of the table and accepted the offer of a pasty and mug of tea.

‘You married, sir?’ Morgan asked.

‘No.’ Alec paused. ‘Not any more. Wife died four years ago.’ They said grief dulled with time but every day he still felt the pain of the loss of his wife—his Catriona—and their child like a knife in his chest.

The atmosphere around him shifted like sand, but Alec merely tapped the pasty he had been given and continued, ‘Bridget O’Grady keeps house for my brother and me. A good woman in so many ways, but she can burn porridge just by looking at it.’

That provoked laughter and broke the tension. Alec brushed the crumbs from his shirt and rose to his feet, cracking his head on the low ceiling. He rubbed the injury and silently cursed his mother’s tall genes.

‘I can tell you weren’t born a miner,’ Trevalyn said. ‘You’d have lasted five minutes at Geevor.’

Alec let the comment pass. His family had been coal miners in Lanarkshire for more generations than he could count. He’d been born the son of a miner. And I’d have followed him down the mines, but for a sharp-eyed clergyman who had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship.

As each man finished his pasty they broke off the end and tossed it into a dark corner.

‘You’ll be attracting rats doing that,’ Alec said.