Leaving the door to Betsy’s room open in case the child called for her in the night, she went next door to her own bedroom and got ready for bed. The warm summer twilight had given way to darkness in the last few minutes and she lay for a while thinking and planning for the future before drifting off to sleep, one hand under her cheek and her hair spread out on the pillow much the same as Betsy’s had been.

Arthur Vickers sat for another hour or so downstairs slumped in his armchair and staring morosely into the empty fireplace. He was angry, angry and frustrated, and the more whisky he drank the angrier he became. Mary’d made a monkey out of him, he thought bitterly. Here he was keeping her and her flyblow well fed with a roof over their heads and yet she acted like she was untouchable. Well, someone had touched her all right and the bairn was living proof of it. It’d been weeks since he’d got any relief from Nell and his body was crying out for it. He couldn’t go on like this much longer and why should he? Aye, why should he?

He swore harshly, then sat grinding his teeth as he worked himself up into a flaming temper, his hands clenched into fists. Half the bottle of whisky was gone and after a while he poured himself another glass, staring round the room with bleary eyes. He’d bet his last farthing that she’d never lived in a house like this one before, but was she grateful? Was she hell. She had a good going-on thanks to him but you’d never know it from the way she treated him. No other man would put up with it and he was blowed if he was, not any more. It was time she learned who was the master in this house.

He lurched to his feet, his head muzzy but the need of his body inflamed by his sense of injustice.

Aye, he’d show her all right and what was she, after all? Scum from the town, that’s what. If she’d been a decent lass she wouldn’t have been stood at the hirings selling herself, now would she. Her family had turned her out when she’d got herself a bellyful, that was the truth of it.