Ben looked shocked as he leaned even further forward in his chair. ‘But surely there’s some mistake,’ he said as colour rose in his cheeks. ‘Isn’t it customary for the eldest son to inherit?’

Mr Dixon shook his head. ‘In years gone by it would have been,’ he answered. ‘But times are changing, and it is quite usual now for the first person in a marriage to pass away to leave what they own to their spouse.’

Ben’s lips set in a grim line and, without a word, he rose and marched from the room. No one seemed to notice. Livvy and Kathy were too busy crying, and Sunday seemed trapped in a world of her own.

Chapter One

September 1935

‘I thought we might all go to the carnival next Saturday,’ Cissie suggested, as she folded the clothes she had fetched in from the line outside.

Sunday was peeling potatoes for dinner at the sink. She shrugged. ‘Hm, we’ll see.’

Cissie sighed. So much had changed since Tom’s death five years before. And not just at Treetops. Change was afoot in the town too. Council housing was springing up to house the poor who had been forced to live in the Union Workhouse, which was now closed, much to Sunday’s delight. She had no happy memories of the place, although once she was grown, she had worked tirelessly with the board of governors to ensure that the living conditions for the residents were vastly improved.

Now that Treetops was no longer run as a children’s home, Cissie and Sunday did most of the work about the house themselves. There was no longer a need for hired staff, but although Sunday did more than her share, she had never really got over the death of her husband and rarely smiled anymore. Most of the rooms had been closed up, as it was too expensive to light fires in them all, and the furniture inside was swathed in dust sheets. Cissie often felt sad as she thought back to days gone by when the house had been full of children and their laughter had echoed along the corridors, but she was made of stern stuff and there was no point in living in the past. She did her best to get on with things.

Livvy was doing a secretarial course and working at a solicitor’s office in the town, and Kathy had started her nursing training and was working at the General Hospital in Manor Court Road. When she wasn’t at the hospital, she would still help out in the stables and ride whenever she could. In fact, she never seemed to stop, as Cissie had once remarked to Sunday.

‘Ah well, you know what they say,’ Sunday had replied with a smile. ‘Saturday’s child works hard for a living.’