Betsy couldn’t stop to say her goodbyes, or the thank you she knew was due to this kindly lady. Her stomach was about to betray her, and she had to get out of sight before she was sick again.

Only just making it around the corner, she threw her heart up into the gutter once more. This time the tears flowed unheeded, as between retching she sobbed. Leaning against the wall of the corner house once the bout had passed, she felt a sense of wretchedness settle in her.

‘Eeh, lass, it didn’t take your Bill long, once he were mended, did it? I reckon as he’s after that son he allus wanted. Come on, let’s help you home.’

‘Ta, Wendy. Did you see what happened?’

‘Aye, I did. There’s naw getting away with crossing them as have money and influence . . . Aw, Betsy, you don’t think – I mean . . . what he did to you, he’s not put your belly up, has he?’

Betsy could only sob into the hanky she’d taken from her pocket. Wendy lived in the same street as her, and Betsy had known her all her life. Wendy was known as one for a bit of gossip. They’d been to the same school as lasses, but had grown apart, as Betsy had been considered to have risen in the world, with her being a friend of Mags and working in the office of the mill instead of on the factory floor. Ha, the old ’uns used to say as no good would come from trying to get above me station, and they were right an’ all.

‘I knaw as it’s asking sommat of you, Wendy, but keep this and your speculation to yourself, will you? It’s going to break my Bill, and he least deserves that. Besides, what you said first time could be right, as he were at me the moment his leg were done.’

She hated talking in this way of the love that she and Bill shared, but it was what Wendy would understand. Most women took what their men did to them as a penance to be put up with. Betsy had never understood this attitude.

‘Well, in that case, you could get lucky, lass. Naw, I’ll not say owt. And, Betsy, it’s nice to have you back in the street and one of us again.’

‘I’ve allus been one of you. I didn’t change – it was how you saw me that changed. Anyroad we’re to get on home. I’ve me young ’uns to sort out. Happen Bill will go along to the church school and book them in for tomorrow.’

‘It’s grand to see him walking like a man again, lass. Your connections helped him all right, but what happened to young Miss Margaret were a crying shame. Fancy her ending up as a mental case, who’d have thought it, eh? And there’s rumours an’ all that he ain’t going short. You knaw that young nurse—’