The next few weeks were ones of hard work and a certain amount of frustration at the chariness of folk trusting that the bakery was different under her ownership. Rose made sure she was in bed every night at ten o’clock because she was up at three to begin the first of the day’s baking. Betsy attended the Consett Church of England school, and although Amy had offered to take her each morning, Rose liked to do it herself. Once she was home again she would dress the shop window and the shelves inside the shop and open the door to customers at nine-thirty sharp.

For the first couple of months Amy and Frank, along with Daisy’s family, once again benefited from the amount of food left at the end of each day. Rose kept a certain amount back to be sold the next day as ‘stale bread’ at less than half the price, and some she would make into bread puddings or sell as ‘crumb’ to the local butcher three doors along to bulk out his sausages. But slowly, by the time spring raised a tentative head and the snow and ice of winter became a distant memory, word of mouth had spread and sometimes there was even a small queue in the morning waiting for the door to open. By the summer she was thinking about employing an assistant to help in the front of the shop so she could bake more, as she was regularly running out of bread and cakes by mid-afternoon when she fetched Betsy home from school. It would also mean she didn’t have to close the shop for half an hour or so while she collected the child.

The very day she put an advertisement in the shop window Amy arrived at lunchtime in floods of tears. It transpired Daisy’s husband had been killed in an accident on the way to work that morning when several cows that were being herded through the town to fresh pasture had taken fright and bolted. In its panic one had kicked Lonnie in the chest when he’d tried to help the cowhand restrain them, and the doctor thought the blow had stopped his heart beating. Apparently he’d fallen like a stone.