Anyway, all in all when Amy had called round to tell her about the bakery it seemed the answer to her prayers. She’d be able to move house and finish at the market, and as far as he was concerned she would have disappeared. This strange, disturbing and tenuous thread between them would be broken. He had his army career and would be away from home for large parts of the year, and the likelihood was that their paths would never cross. After all, Cissy had said she’d never seen him in the market before, and folk like the Bembridges didn’t mix with the working class except in their role of employers.

When she arrived at Amy’s house she spent a little time there, telling her friend and Frank what had happened, and was touched when they both immediately offered their services to help her with the move. She had been invited to the inn for New Year’s Eve with Amy and Frank but had declined. It had been nice to spend Christmas Day there and Betsy had had a lovely time playing with Daisy’s girls, but she didn’t want to keep her up to see the New Year in, besides which the jollity and almost frantic merriment that went on during this night at the end of the year always made her feel she was on the outside looking in. It was strange, but she felt less lonely quietly sitting at home with Betsy asleep upstairs than being in a crowd of people who would be drinking, singing and dancing. Last year she had raised a glass to Davey as the kitchen clock had struck twelve, telling him she loved him and missed him and that Betsy was growing up strong and healthy and he would be proud of her. She purposely didn’t let herself think about Nathaniel or the miller or her life in the workhouse, believing that it was right to enter the new year with good thoughts and not bad.