When eventually he’d fallen into a drunken stupor he had slept the whole of the following day before waking with a thick head and a curdled stomach in the middle of the night. The next morning he had washed and shaved and made himself presentable, and then walked the three or four miles to Consett. After asking around he’d quickly discovered where the bakery was, and had stood a few doors down on the opposite side of the road watching the comings and goings in the shop for a while, before having a meal and a pint at a nearby public house. He had used his charm on the barmaid, and after a series of seemingly innocuous questions had received confirmation of all the old carrier had said. When he’d asked about lodgings in the area Myra had told him one of the rooms at the inn was vacant, and after speaking to the landlord and inspecting it, he’d paid for a month up front. The room was a small single and basic in the extreme but it was cheap, and it was the locality that appealed, being on the corner of the street in which the bakery was located. From the window he had a perfect view up the street.

He had walked back to Shotley Bridge and collected his few belongings before returning to the public house, and once in the room had taken up a stance at the window. That was when he had seen Rose for the first time. The sight of her had hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. She was even more beautiful than he remembered; the girl had gone and in her place was a stunningly lovely woman who had walked with her head held high and all the confidence in the world. She’d had a child with her whom he had assumed was Betsy because of the colour of her hair, and some other little girls, and they had all disappeared into the shop.