She wouldn’t be home for Nell’s wedding to Edward, which was scheduled for the spring, either. Did she care? Not really. She wished them well in a detached way, but her family were now part of an old life to which she’d decided she would never return, even when she was released from prison.

No, Gina Arnold was gone. When she got out of here she would be a different person – a new person – and incarceration afforded her almost unlimited time in which to think about who this person might be.

She lay back on the thin blankets and closed her eyes, wondering what this new woman was to be called. She’d had a few names already: Gina Arnold and Diana Thornton, and also, amongst others and for a brief time, Eliza Thwaite and Nancy Beveridge, both on their uppers and needing to pawn their belongings in Blackburn and Preston.

Gina laughed then. Eliza Thwaite – it would serve that old crone right for all eternity if her name lived on into Gina’s new life, but no, on second thoughts, she’d rather not be saddled with that woman’s name.

What else could she be called? Mary or Ruth Hathersage? No, those ladies had already ‘lent’ Gina some money; they could keep their names. They’d been kind and deserved no part in Gina’s future adventures. Besides, Gina thought superstitiously, she didn’t want, by taking one of their names, to become like them, taking waifs and strays under her wing and spreading sunbeams over ‘all the creatures of the earth, sea and sky’. That would be far too much like hard work, especially for her!

A bell rang and Gina climbed down and prepared to be let out of the cell to go to her job in the prison kitchen. She’d bluffed her way into this employment, saying she’d worked in the kitchen in a big house, which was almost true. She had learned a lot from watching Mrs Bassett, and Grindle Hall was quite a big house, no matter that only two people lived there most of the time. Once in the prison kitchen it hadn’t been difficult to follow instructions from the cook to stir porridge, mash potatoes and boil up stew, along with preparing all the other unappetising, beige-coloured food that was dished up. Frankly, Gina was certain she could do a lot better alone, without anyone telling her what to do. Mrs Bassett could have told this cook a few things about making decent gravy.

While at Grindle Hall Gina had thought she’d never want to make any kind of career of cooking but now she could see it might be a way forward in life – not permanent, but something to get her where she wanted to be.