He chuckled wryly. ‘Breaks, lass? We had no set time for them, not like the lads today. Food an’ drink was taken as and when we could manage it. Keepin’ everything ticking over was more important than us. We were expendable, you see, and them up top reminded us of it if we forgot. Aye, them early days at the works weren’t no picnic.’

‘Is your friend, Abe, still in Consett?’

‘Abe?’ He was silent for a moment. ‘He copped it a few years after we started at the works. Gassed he was. Left a wife an’ two bairns. There were plenty like him an’ all, gassed or burned or whatever.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Rose said softly. More widows like herself.

‘Long time ago now, lass, but we’d bin best pals since we were no older than your little’un – and for him to go like that.’ This time the pause was longer. ‘Took me a good while to get over it, I don’t mind admitting. Mind you, better to go quick like Abe did than linger like some poor devils, never able to work again and good to neither man nor beast, especially if they were the breadwinner. It’d be the workhouse then, the whole family going in. The houses were tied, you see. Abe’s wife was lucky, her mam an’ da took her an’ the two bairns in. Dunno how they managed cause her mam an’ da lived in Puddlers Row with just a single room up and down an’ a ladder to get from one room to another, an’ they still had three bairns at home when Abe died. Still, you do anything for family, don’t you.’

‘Yes,’ Rose had said quietly. ‘You do anything for family.’

The old man had fallen silent after that, probably lost in memories of when he and his pal Abe were young, and it hadn’t been long before they had reached the town itself.

She had told Eustace that she was meeting her friends outside the town hall, deciding that was as good a place as any to get her bearings. Now, as the horse and cart disappeared into the distance, she stood looking about her, Betsy clutching her skirt but happy enough following her long sleep in the back of the cart.