The following morning after her conversation with Amy, Wilbur knocked on the door of Rose’s room. ‘Amy tells us you’re thinking of renting somewhere close to the market, lass, and if that’s the case you could do worse than going to see an old pal of mine,’ he said quietly. ‘Runs a shop off Victoria Street as his main business, but he’s got a couple of houses he rents out too. Always canny, Henry was. Even as a lad in short trousers he’d come to school with a bag of barley sugar or treacle toffee and sell some to the other bairns for a nice little profit. Anyway, he was in here for a pint or two the other night and mentioned one of his tenants had done a moonlight flit owing him several weeks’ rent. Right browned off, he was.’

‘And this house is close to the market?’

‘Oh aye, I think so. You could go and see him and ask, anyway, say I sent you and can vouch for you if you like. He’s all right, is Henry, and he’d ask a fair rent.’

So it was that at eleven o’clock Rose found herself standing in Henry’s shop. Wilbur had told her it was a grocer’s but it seemed to Rose the shop stocked a little of everything. Outside under an awning boxes of fruit and vegetables were on display and there were more inside, along with shelves from floor to ceiling filled with jars of preserves, pickles, tea, coffee, sugar, confectionery, a tub of butter and another of cheese, ham, eggs, bacon – everything a housewife could possibly need and more besides. The man behind the long wooden counter that ran the length of the shop was weighing up a slab of butter for a customer when Rose entered holding Betsy’s hand, so she stood looking about her. In one corner there were tools and pots and pans and other hardware items; in another, heaped on top of each other, sacks of flour and potatoes and even kindling wood, along with a box of candles, long bars of soap from which small pieces would be cut off to the customer’s requirements, and a big container of packets of grate blacking.

Once the woman in front of her had completed her purchases Rose stepped forward. ‘Mr Hartley?’

‘Aye, lass, that’s me. Henry Hartley at your service.’ He had been wiping his hands on a piece of old towelling as he spoke. ‘What can I get you?’

‘Mr Croft, Wilbur Croft at the Bee Hive, said you might have a house available to rent. I’m staying there at the moment but I need a place of my own.’

‘Is that right?’ His hands had become still and now he dropped the rag on the counter, narrowing his eyes. ‘Just you and the bairn, is it?’ The inevitable question.