Alarmed, Bridget sat up. ‘No! And I hope he never does.’

Groaning, Fanny shifted her position and resumed her search. ‘Don’t worry,’ she called, her head deep inside the cupboard. ‘He’ll not find out from me. But it only goes to prove what I’m saying. As far as he knows, it’s just you and him keeping the secret.’

‘Come to think of it, Nelly Potts said she heard how the men from the quarry celebrated soon as ever they heard the news.’

‘There you are then. It’s just like I said. Tom Mulligan’s reputation is all the better for what you and Harry did.’

‘I can’t deny that. In fact, before it happened, he was intending to leave the quarry and the area where he’s lived all his life. We’d have been uprooted to God knows where. He might not have found work, and we might have been miserable. All because he couldn’t hold his head up among the other men. They’d all fathered bairns and he hadn’t, you see.’

‘Men! Scourge of the bleedin’ earth, they are.’

‘It’s awful though, Fanny.’ Tom’s life may have been improved in some ways, she thought, but in others they were both victims of what happened the night of the snowstorm. ‘He won’t talk. He gets up of a morning and has his breakfast. I pack his snap can and off he goes. The same of an evening when he gets back. He comes in and I put his tea in front of him. He eats it in silence, then takes himself off to the front parlour where he stays till bedtime. We’re like a pair of strangers.’

‘Oh, Bridget, that’s bloody terrible!’ There was a scraping and scuffling from the sideboard. ‘I can’t find the bleedin’ bottle an’ I know it were in ’ere.’

‘He knows I’ve no one else to talk to,’ Bridget said quietly, ‘but it doesn’t seem to bother him. The only person I see from morning to night is Nelly Potts. She runs in and out all bloody day, getting on my nerves and making a right nuisance of herself. She comes to the door under any pretext, borrowing this, returning that. The other day she frightened the life out of me.’

‘Oh?’ Fanny looked up, knocking her head as she did so. ‘Frightened the life out of you how?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Bridget wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want Fanny frightened too.

‘No, go on!’ When Fanny’s curiosity was aroused, there was no getting away from it. ‘How did the old bugger frighten you?’

‘You don’t want to hear.’

‘Oh, yes, I bleedin’ well do. What’s the silly cow been saying?’

‘Something and nothing.’

‘Bridget!’

‘All right. She told me how, when her sister had her first bairn, it took a week for it to arrive. The next day she gave up the ghost, leaving the bairn to be looked after by her mam.’

Fanny laughed aloud. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? You know how the old’uns make up stories to frighten the young. The old biddy were just having you on. Take no notice.’