Thrusting aside her better instincts, Molly promised the girl, ‘We will go back to Blackburn, Sal. But maybe not to the house on Dock Street.’

‘Why not?’

Molly had to think fast. She didn’t want to frighten the child by explaining how there were certain people, bad people, who meant to harm them. Instead she told her, ‘There’ll be new tenants living in the house now… the landlord wouldn’t let it stay empty, not when there are plenty of people willing to pay for a roof over their heads.’

‘Can we lodge with Tilly Watson then? She will let us… I know she will, Mammy!’

‘No, sweetheart. You’re quite right, though. Tilly would not refuse to take us in, but it wouldn’t be fair… she already has a house full of her own brood.’

‘Can we ask Nelly then? She’s got a big house.’

‘No. We can’t do that either… you know we can’t!’ In spite of deliberately trying to sound matter-of-fact, Molly couldn’t disguise the sharp edge to her voice. She saw the girl’s blue eyes grow bigger and knew instinctively that the flicker of pain in them was an unpleasant memory: a particular memory, of the day when the two of them were forced to hide in the shrubbery outside the Tanners’ house in Park Street.

‘Was that man Nelly’s friend?’ Sal had asked the same question many times during the weeks following the frightful incident. ‘I don’t like that man,’ she uttered now, her voice hushed and cautious, as though she were afraid he might suddenly appear.

‘I think he must have been.’ Molly wondered whether her own fear of Caleb Crowther had transmitted itself to little Sal, or whether the girl’s horror of him was a virgin horror, impressed on her mind by that one, close sighting of him. Certainly he was a fearsome figure, not only grotesque to look at, but sending before him an atmosphere of terror. ‘Yes, darling, I think he must be a friend of Nelly’s… or she would never have let such a man cross her doorstep. No, we can’t go to the house on Park Street either.’

‘Where will we go then?’

‘Ssh, darling. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that. You just go back to sleep now, and leave all the worrying to your mammy.’ Easy words, thought Molly, but words would not feed them nor put a roof over their heads. Thoughts of Mick came over her. She smiled inwardly at the pleasure his company had brought her; images of the cosy barge insisted their way into the upheaval of her mind, of his tall, manly frame bent over the stove, warming up the stew he had made, or brewing a strong measure of tea. Whatever he did for her and Jack’s children was always done graciously and with a loving smile. With the warm, contented memories came a flurry of pain and regret to Molly’s young, lonely heart.

How many times had she lain awake in that hard, uncomfortable and lonely bed, reliving that last tender scene aboard Mick’s barge, when he had taken her in his arms and murmured, ‘I love you, Molly’? How often had Molly questioned the wisdom of her decision to turn her back on that fine man? So often that she could not count the times.