With this, he turned from her and got back into his car. Betsy stared after him, before collapsing onto the wall of the house that she stood outside.

‘What’s to do, lass? Are you all right? That were the Roford bloke, weren’t it? What does he want with you? He looked threatening. I’d go to the police, if I were you.’

‘Oh, Mrs Church, he – he said he’d . . . Oh God, I’ve got to get home. Me family ain’t safe.’

‘Eeh, lass. I heard about your troubles. Your ma must be turning in her grave. A God-fearing woman she was – she’d have never known the like of what went on. But why are you scared now, lass? It’s over, ain’t it?’

‘Naw. His poor wife. She’s gone missing from that asylum he put her in, and he’s blaming me. He threatened all sorts. I’ve to go, Mrs Church, as no one knaws more than me what an evil man he is. He’s capable of doing what he says.’

‘Aw, not Miss Margaret? Eeh, what befell the lass, eh? Such a lovely, kind girl and a heroine an’ all. How did she come to be mixed up with the likes of him? It’s no wonder that she went mad, and now she might be wandering around somewhere, lost and alone, it’s a crying shame.’

Betsy went to defend Mags’s sanity, but thought better of it. ‘I’ve to go. I – I were running to the church school, to book me young ’uns in, as Roford’s kicked them out of the mill’s welfare school. I don’t want to leave Bill with the kids too long. I’ll see you later, lass.’

The woman seemed satisfied with this explanation, though it must have looked as if Roford had been chasing Betsy. More rumours would circulate – damaging rumours that might one day turn the belief they had in her into knowing nods. Oh, Mags, please hurry and take us all out of this hell on earth. Please.

Bill was full of remorse when she reached home. ‘Eeh, lass, I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought that way. It just came to me, with you saying you had a babby in you. I – I, well, I thought . . . you’d got him off you afore that happened. Now I knaw as you didn’t, I’m tortured all over again.’

‘Well, I hope it’s by the thought of what I went through, and not the thought that I could have stopped him. You saw the bruising.’

As she said this, Betsy flushed. Aye, she’d been bruised in places where she’d thought to harm herself, but her inner thighs had not been bruised. ‘Look, never mind all this now. You’ve to wrestle with it yourself. I can’t make you believe me. But sommat else has happened, and I’m scared.’

Bill’s reaction to Betsy telling him what had happened was a mixture of fear and anger. He wanted to go after Roford and warn him off, but knew he wasn’t strong enough for any such confrontation. His years of being crippled with pain had taken their toll on his body. His appetite had left him, and he’d turned to skin and bones.