The sound of Betsy’s grizzling in her cot upstairs was a welcome distraction, and when she walked into her daughter’s little room, the moment the baby saw her she stopped whimpering and smiled. A rush of feeling, so strong that it brought the breath catching in her throat, swept through Rose, and for a moment nothing else in the world mattered. She bent down and lifted her child from the snug nest and immediately Betsy cuddled into her. The room was bitterly cold – for the last few days there had been ice on the inside of the window as well as outside – but Betsy was warm and flushed from her cocoon of blankets topped by a small eiderdown Rose had made when she was pregnant.

Since she had given birth to Betsy, Rose had found herself thinking about her own mother more. All she had been told by the officious workhouse matron was that her mother had been unmarried and barely fifteen years old when she’d had her, and that she had died just eighteen months later. It must have been so hard for her giving birth when she was little more than a child herself, and then her life being cut short when she was so young and after enduring the workhouse. Unbeknown even to Davey, she had talked to her mam in her mind, telling her she loved her and that she hoped she was happy where she was. Now she whispered, ‘Help me, Mam. I need you. Tell me what to do.’

Downstairs she changed and fed Betsy after lighting the lamp. It was nearly five o’clock and dark outside but she was trying to eke out the last of the oil. Their coal bunker in the back yard was nearly empty too, and she had little food in the house. The refreshments for the simple wake for Davey had taken all the money she had, but she had known it was expected that she provide something. Not to have done so would have been considered disrespectful to his memory. No matter that she was at her wits’ end, the proprieties had to be maintained, she thought bitterly. As it was it had been a dry wake; she simply hadn’t been able to afford any beer or whisky which she knew wouldn’t have pleased some folk.

Betsy was gurgling to her teddy bear in her pram, and as Rose stood staring out of the window into the swirling dancing snowflakes, she let herself imagine what today would have been like if Davey was here. He would be arriving home in the next little while with a small turkey for their Christmas dinner like he had done the year before, his brown eyes a-glow because they would be having some time together.