As always, Tom was restless, tossing this way and that, throwing his little arms in and out of the coarse grey blanket and rolling from one side of his body to the other. Molly’s heart went out to him. She wondered at his restlessness, suspecting that it stemmed from the discomfort which his deformed leg caused him. She had discovered that, if he laid for too long on that grotesque little stump, the feeling would go from it. On other occasions, he would be gripped by a cruel and vicious fit of cramp, which only his mammy’s loving fingers could massage away. It pained Molly’s heart to know that here he was, only a few months away from his second birthday, and she was no closer to getting Tom’s crippled leg mended than she had been on the day of his birth; when his own daddy had run away at the sight of his son. When his daddy had run away! When Jack had run away.

Of a sudden, Molly was filled with disgust and dread. Spiralling up in the midst of all these painful emotions was a surge of guilt. Guilt because she had somehow failed not only Tom, but all of her precious children. It was because of her and the misdemeanours in her past that she was now forced to drag these little innocents from place to place. And what of their daddy? What of Jack? Jack, who had never grown up. Jack, whom she had fallen in love with on the night of their escape from Caleb Crowther’s clutches, and whose children she had lovingly conceived and borne. Where was he now?

Lately, Molly had come to ask herself why she was driven to search for him. Just as often, she had come to wonder whether or not she really wanted to find him. If, one day, he walked into that café, what would she do? What would she say to him? And – more importantly – would he be pleased to see her? All of these questions Molly tormented herself with. But there was one in particular which would not go away, and which caused her the greatest torment of all. Did she still love Jack? It was as though, in her desperate longing to find him, Molly had lost the real reason as to why she scanned every face in every crowd. Somewhere along the way she had begun to lose faith in her children’s daddy. Little by little, that feeling she had for him, and which she called ‘love’, began to dwindle, until there was only shame and anger left.

If Jack’s memory was shrinking in Molly’s tired heart, there was another whose image was becoming more and more cherished. These days Mick Darcy was closer to Molly than he had ever been. In the late, dark hours when her duties were over and she lay in the narrow bunk some way from her children, Molly would remember the many happy times she and Mick had shared with those infants. All of her instincts told her that were she to search the world over, she would never find a better man; a man who had never wanted anything more than to take care of her and her babies. A good and loyal fellow. Certainly no other man could love her more deeply than Mick had loved her.