Before the dawn lit up the sky on another cold January day, Molly could be seen pushing the cart along the alleys of Liverpool. When Peggy echoed little Sal’s remark, ‘Where we going, Mam?’ Molly reassured them both. However, in her heart, she could see no comfort for any of them. She had to make plans, this much she knew; for now, her only aim was to keep her bairns safe.

With that in mind, Molly kept her eyes on the road ahead. She had no idea where it led; only that she must follow it, and hope against hope that, at the end of it, she would find her Jack.

Chapter Nine

On the fourth of March, in the Year of Our Lord 1887, Emma stood on the highest point in Corporation Park, thoughtfully surveying the scene below. It was a strange sort of day, with a keen breeze cutting the high ground, and the sun shining brilliantly from a spiteful, shifting sky. It was neither warm nor cold, and at half-past two in the afternoon neither light nor dark. The sharp, bitter wind was erratic, dying down in one instant and whipping up to a frenzy in the next. The sun’s brilliant bright rays were piercing to the eye, but they held no warmth. There was a peculiar agitated mood about the wind, and a disturbing unpredictability about the weather in general. Emma thought it matched her own mood.

Against the drifting patchwork of grey and white clouds and surrounded by vast unbroken stretches of grassland, Emma made a lonely figure high up on the pinnacle beside the Crimean guns. She was impeccably dressed as ever: in a burgundy coat nipped in at the waist and chased with dark lace at the hem. On her feet were the daintiest black pearl-button shoes, and showing at her throat was the exquisite silken collar of her ivory-cream blouse. On her shining chestnut hair, which was loosely curled into the nape of her neck, she wore a large, soft tammy of the same striking colour as her strong grey eyes, which now were roving the streets and by-ways below, drawing in the years and reliving precious moments of long ago.

Even in her mid-forties, Emma was still an astonishingly attractive woman. She possessed a unique blend of dignity, grace and loveliness that would complement any woman half her age. Yet she was never proud nor vain, and it was always others who acclaimed her beauty, while Emma saw nothing special or admirable about the way Nature had fashioned her. If she consciously strove to preserve any part of her character, it was that strength of spirit with which she had been blessed, and which had brought her through so many traumas in her eventful life.

So often, when life had sought to bring her to her knees, that special strength within her had helped her through. Always there for her to call on, never once had it failed to sustain her. Until now.