He shook his head. ‘I can’t do that, Bridget. I’ve already told you why, and besides, I need you to mind my mother while I’m gone. Alice no longer lives here, and though it is Fay’s morning for visiting Mother, she doesn’t arrive for another half hour or more. We can’t wait that long, and even if we could, I wouldn’t take you along.’ Tenderly stroking the tears from her eyes, he said, ‘We’ll find Ruthie. I won’t come back to you without her. And besides, I love her too, you know.’

Through blurred eyes, Bridget studied his face, the brown eyes that Ruthie had taken to, and the tiny dimple in his chin that deepened when he smiled, and her heart was full. ‘I understand,’ she said, ‘and you mustn’t worry about your mother. She’ll be safe with me.’

When he and Joe left, she ran to the window and watched them climb on to the cart. Harry didn’t look up as he went by, but for the first time in years Bridget felt a great sense of trust and reassurance.

It seemed strange to be here in Harry’s house, a place she had never set foot in before and yet which she had often wondered about.

Restless, she wandered about, thinking about Ruthie. She would not let herself think that they wouldn’t find her, only where she would be found, and whether she would be all right.

As she walked from room to room, she got a feeling of contentment, and when she opened the door to Harry’s workplace, she could feel his presence. The room was somehow like him, with its sturdy brown shelves and rolls of material, all neatly labelled and stacked; it was a room with character, the kind of room a man might feel comfortable in. In one corner was a beautiful old desk with deep drawers and brass handles. On top was a leatherbound ledger and a splendid bronze shire horse.

Intrigued, Bridget studied its long shaggy mane and the beautiful feathers at its fetlocks. It took only a moment for her to recognise it as a model of the horse that had drawn Harry’s cart when he worked at Weatherfield Grange. ‘You loved that horse, didn’t you, Harry?’ she whispered. ‘You were pals for a long time. You must have hated saying goodbye.’

Bridget thought she understood why he had left a job he loved to follow in his father’s footsteps as a tailor. Joe had mentioned how Harry’s father had always wanted his son to follow the trade, and she suspected he had done so partly to make amends for disappointing his father, and partly as a penance for the sin he and she had committed.

Gazing about at the room where Harry and his father before him had worked all the hours God sent, Bridget felt humbled. ‘So this is where you work, is it, Harry? Here, in this confined place, surrounded by the things your father loved, when in your heart you would rather be out there in God’s green land.’