‘Can you not get a message to Mags?’

‘Naw, I can’t – I told you. I wish I could. I wish I knew how she is, but there’s nowt I can do. If owt occurs, I’ll let you knaw.’

Stepping back inside her ma’s house – the house she’d always think of as her ma’s – Betsy went to close the door.

‘Please believe me, I only want to help Mags. I do.’

‘You should have thought of that when you restarted your affair with Roford, knowing that Mags was engaged to him. I’m sorry, but there’s nowt I can do.’

As the door closed, Betsy was sure she heard a sob. She’d never met anyone like Susan, and there was something very likeable about her – however, even thinking this, she daren’t jeopardize Mags’s chances by trusting the girl.

Leaning on the door, Betsy thought about the message that the doctor had sent. Scotland! Me and Bill and the kids. Could I do it? Uproot meself from the only life I’ve ever known? Bring the kids up in a foreign country?

Feeling humiliated, Susan walked back along the street. One thing she’d learned since coming to Blackburn was that northerners stuck together. She’d tried to make friends amongst the staff, but in their canny way they’d sussed out why she was really here and barely gave her the time of day. Loneliness engulfed her. She wanted to go back to London and be near Montel, because surely he wouldn’t win Mags’s heart. Oh, if anyone could after what she’d been through, Montel could, but deep down she knew that she’d played on his infatuation with Mags simply to get him up here – and mostly to get her little Sybil back.

Harold was going to be furious, but she’d made up her mind. If only Harold would agree to go and live back in London! He hated it up here, after all, and hated the people, calling them dumb, cloth-cap-wearing idiots.

But she knew he dared not leave. He worried that somehow Mags would get possession of everything, if he did so. How, Susan couldn’t imagine because, as Harold said, everything a wife owned became the husband’s on marriage. So what was he worrying about?

A plaque on the door of a house that she passed caught Susan’s attention: ‘Dr Lange, Physician’. Though he was no longer the family doctor, he must know how Mags was.

The door opened to her, and a woman with a look of mistrust asked how she could help Susan. ‘I would like to speak with Dr Lange, please. I’m an assistant to Mr Roford. I’d be grateful if the doctor could spare me some time.’

‘Come in. Take a seat in there and I’ll see if the doctor can see you. He’s a busy man, mind.’

As Susan entered the waiting room, she felt like running out again. What was she doing? Christ, Harold will kill me if he finds out. And she knew there was a good chance he would. These folk gossiped amongst themselves; someone would tell Cook, then she would find a way of telling Barnard. Susan hated the sly Barnard, and thought his disdain of her filtered through to the rest of the staff and made them dislike her, without giving her a chance. But then they all loved Mags. They see me as the root cause of all that has happened! Well, the reason for her incarceration at least. I can’t do much about that, but in helping Mags, some of the guilt I feel will hopefully leave me.