So far, the opportunity had not presented itself. Tomorrow, though, his good wife was making her monthly visit to her ageing mother in Yorkshire, and he did not intend to let his chance slip by. The thought of taking Molly’s naked body in his arms caused him such great excitement that he had hardly been able to contain himself these past few days.

Whenever Molly had a minute to breathe between the rush of customers, she used that minute to dash back to the outhouse and check that the children were soundly sleeping. Now, when there came a suitable lull, she looked into the kitchen to tell Bill Craig that she was ‘just making sure the bairns were all right’.

‘Sure, Molly,’ he told her altogether too sweetly, ‘quick as you can, mind… we don’t want a riot in here.’ He was a long, thin man with a pencil-trim moustache and angular features. His dark eyes were disturbingly penetrating and constantly darted about so as not to miss anything. Molly kept her distance. He was her employer. His wife had not begrudged her and the children using the outhouse. For that Molly was grateful, but, for reasons she found difficult to define, she did not like this odd couple.

Opening the door softly, so as not to disturb the sleeping children, Molly crept forward towards the makeshift beds. Outside the keen April wind teased and rattled at the walls of the outhouse, whistling eerily down the chimney and wailing like a lost soul in torment. At once, the gentle sound of children slumbering comforted Molly. In the soft glow of moonlight which filtered in through the four small panes of the room’s only window, Molly could easily recognize the familiar shapes of the three small figures all huddled together in the bed: there was Sal, her fine golden hair making a gossamer cloud on the bolster; to the right of her was Peggy, a sturdy little frame tucked into the protective crook of her sister’s arm, her mouth wide open and emitting a strange whimpering sound, which was something between a whistle and a snore.

The only lad was on the other side of Sal. Molly had always believed Tom to be an unusually handsome baby, with his thick black hair and dark laughing eyes. Tilly Watson likened him to Molly herself, and now Molly wondered about their distinguished dark features. It was true that Tom had her looks. But where had they come from? Not from old Sal, because Molly knew that the old dear was not blood kin to her. Again, she was made to think on her true parentage. It was obvious that her own dark hair and eyes, and those of Tom, were inherited from one or both of her real parents: Tom’s grandparents. Certainly, Tom did not get his own dark features from his daddy, because Jack’s hair was fair, and his eyes a pale brown colour. Peggy was the nearest to Jack’s colouring. As for little Sal, well, Molly had often been puzzled by her blue eyes and golden hair. It was a funny thing but little Sal so often reminded Molly of that other Sal, the old lovable and eccentric tramp who had been everything to Molly in her formative years. There was something about her older daughter that really did put Molly in mind of old Sal Tanner. It was a curious thing, especially when Molly knew that old Sal had been no blood relation to her at all, a very strange and inexplicable thing to be sure.