It was beginning to snow again, just the random feathery flake blowing in the wind, and as Rose sat in the cab she felt panic rise up in her throat about what she was going to do if the cab driver’s sister had no vacancies. Betsy was sitting on her lap and gazing out of the window with rapt fascination, and as the horse clip-clopped along Rose prayed silently, pleading with God to help her. Betsy would need to be fed and changed soon. Of course most people would say she was mad to leave Sunderland, especially with a child to look after, and maybe she was, but although it was probably reckless and foolhardy she didn’t feel she’d had any choice. Not after what Nathaniel had said and done. He wasn’t normal. She shivered, but it was nothing to do with the bitterly cold day. All the years that Nathaniel had been Davey’s best pal and yet Davey hadn’t known him, not really. It was frightening.

Beattie Harper stood on her doorstep listening to her brother’s explanation of why he had brought a young lass with a baby to her door, and as he finished she glanced towards the cab. ‘You’d better bring her in so I can have a word with her but I’m making no promises, mind, and I’ll thank you not to do the same in the future. This is a guest house, not a boarding house for any Tom, Dick or Harry, as you well know.’

‘She only wants somewhere for a short while.’

‘Does she indeed? And why is that then?’

Hubert shuffled his feet sheepishly. ‘I don’t know.’

Beattie gave him an exasperated big-sister look that he remembered well, before saying, ‘Bring her in then, but you’d better wait in case she’s not suitable.’

‘What am I supposed to do with her then?’

‘I don’t know but you should have thought of that before you spoke of me to a complete stranger, shouldn’t you. And leave her bags in the cab for now.’

That didn’t bode well. Hubert opened his mouth to say more, looked into his sister’s lined face with its thin cheeks, thin lips, thin eyebrows and thin grey hair pulled so tightly back from her brow that it looked painful, and changed his mind. Muttering something under his breath that finished with ‘Christian charity’, he walked over to the cab and opened the door. Apologetically, he said, ‘She wants to have a word before she’ll say if a room’s free.’