Half an hour later, Bridget was tucked up in bed, and Tom was presenting himself for her to admire. ‘What do you think?’ He had on his brown cord trousers and a dark jacket that had seen better days but with his thick build and upright stance he made a presentable sight. ‘You don’t reckon I look too dandy in these smart clothes, do you? The truth now.’

‘Course you don’t look dandy. What a thing to say.’ Bridget thought he was a good-looking man. No doubt the other men’s wives would think so too, she mused.

For a wicked moment she wondered how Tom would react if confronted by an attractive lady who took a naughty fancy to him. She smiled to herself. There was no doubt in her mind. He would blush and stammer, look the other way, and come running home to her at the first opportunity. A quarryman he might be, and gruff with it, but when it came to women other than her, he was a mouse.

‘What about the rest of me then?’

‘You look grand to me, Tom Mulligan.’ His hair was larded down, and except for the long, thick sideburns that almost covered his ears, he was cleanly shaven.

‘So you reckon I’ll do?’ His pale blue eyes smiled down on her.

‘You’ll do just fine,’ she said. ‘Now be off, and don’t worry. After a good, long sleep, you mark my words, I’ll be skipping about like a two-year-old.’ In fact, the minute he went out that door, she’d be out of bed and right behind him down the street – once she’d squared things with Nelly Potts.

‘Right.’ Reassured, he thumped one fist into the other. ‘I’ll fetch Nelly.’ He rushed off, closing the door behind him with a resounding thud.

Bridget winced. ‘Hark at that! And me needing my rest,’ she chuckled.

When the reason for all this charade came back to torment her, the smile slid from her face. ‘There’s nothing to smile about, Bridget Mulligan!’ she chided herself. ‘And well you know it!’

It seemed only a moment before Tom returned, with Nelly by his side. ‘Here we are then,’ he announced. ‘Nelly says she’ll be happy to stay with you until I get back.’

‘An’ don’t forget the shilling for me trouble,’ Nelly promptly reminded him.

While he fished in his pocket, Nelly stood before him, not moving until he flipped the coin into her grubby fingers. ‘One silver shilling, and not a farthing more.’

‘That’ll do. Yer can be on yer way now.’

Nelly was a stout, scruffy person of fifty years and more, though some who knew her from the old days said she must be nearer seventy, an idea she hotly denounced as being ‘a spiteful bloody lie, made up by them as are jealous of me young looks!’

Nelly Potts was anything but young. She walked with a peculiar bent, and possessed a smile that was frightening to man and beast alike. Her features were manly and coarse; she had a wide, cavernous mouth, empty of teeth, and a red, rough tongue that licked at her lips until they were sore and cracked. Her voice was shrill and curiously musical.