They talked for some minutes, he comforting and reassuring, and she feeling that she had spent enough time on God’s earth, and all she wanted now was to be at peace. Harry was the best son a woman could wish for, but he was young and, from what she had heard just now, somewhere there was a woman who had loved him and, God willing, a child that was his. Right or wrong, there was something very wonderful about that. Harry deserved love and contentment, and the strength of his own family about him. He had never once complained, but she knew that at times the weight on his shoulders must be intolerable. Harry was right to throw Alice out, but how she wished it had not happened. For how could a mother not love her child, even if that child was selfish and destructive?

A short time later they heard Alice going down the stairs, and then the front door closing. As she looked up at her son, Maud knew a deep sense of loneliness, but not for herself. It was for Harry she felt lonely.

Harry was too disturbed to work. He paced the floor, his mind going over and over what Alice had said. ‘It can’t be true,’ he muttered. ‘Bridget would have told me. But maybe she kept it from me because of Tom. And how could I blame her for that?’

Beside himself with anguish, he walked back and forth, scraping his hands through his hair. The clock ticked away the minutes; minutes became hours, and still he paced, thinking and worrying.

Lying in her bed, Maud could hear him pacing the floor downstairs, and she could only guess at the agonies he was going through.

‘Bridget Mulligan,’ she whispered. And with that name on her lips, she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Chapter Thirteen

Fanny and Billy had reached the outskirts of Lancaster.

‘Look, Mam, over there!’ Pointing over the hedge towards the clutch of buildings, Billy cried excitedly, ‘It’s a farm. And look, there are hundreds of chicks running about. The farmer won’t miss a few eggs, and I’m hungry enough to eat the chicken as well.’

Fanny laughed. ‘No chickens,’ she said firmly. ‘But you’re right, they’ll not miss four eggs.’

‘Oh, Mam, only four?’ he moaned. ‘I could eat them all to meself.’

‘Well then, you’re a pig, Billy Higgins.’

‘If we take six, we can have three each,’ he suggested hopefully.

‘All right. But only six, and no more. And I’ve a mind to leave a few pennies in the tin.’

‘If you do that we won’t be able to buy a new bucket. Remember, we threw the other away because there was a hole in it.’

‘Oh aye. I’d forgotten about the bucket.’ He was growing more dependable by the minute. ‘But we ain’t broke, yer know,’ she reminded him. ‘Yer mammy’s just being careful with her money, that’s all.’ She winked at him. ‘Happen we might see if there’s a jug o’ milk going spare in the churn as well.’