‘Do you want milk in your tea, Tilly?’ Molly had been deeply wounded by the other woman’s thoughtless observation and was deliberately making no response to it. She knew Tilly meant no real harm. She was not by nature a spiteful person. Besides, Molly reminded herself, Tilly’s comments were only the truth, and she herself had come to recognize that more and more. Jack had been her whole world and she would have lain down her life for him. Now he had deserted her, and the children were all she had left. They were now her world, and these little innocents had no one else to look to but her. She would not let them down.

When Molly returned from the scullery with Tilly’s tea, she was told in a kindly voice to ‘sit down. There’s things we need to talk over.’ Molly’s heart sank to her boots. It’s time, she thought, time for me to be sent on my way, for Tilly’s patience is at an end.

‘I know what you’re going to say, Tilly,’ Molly ventured, doing as she was bidden and seating herself in the upright standchair by the table, ‘and I can’t blame you. Me and the children have put on you long enough, but I’ve got plans in hand and we’ll be on our way soon.’ She hoped that Tilly would be kind enough to give her at least a couple more days, because she still felt incredibly weary and bone tired. Besides which, she had been exaggerating when she told the other woman that she had ‘plans in hand’. She had plans to leave, yes. But she had not the slightest idea of where she and the children would go. Somehow the thought of roughing it yet again in a derelict house or a disused factory was terrifying to her. But happen she would have no choice in the matter, for the truth was that she and the young ’uns were beggars. Beggars could not be choosers. Oh, if only she were strong again! If only she could shake off this feeling of tiredness, when every bone in her body hurt and there were times when it was a terrible effort just to put one foot before the other. ‘You’ve been good to us,’ Molly said now, ‘and I’m grateful for that.’

‘That’s as may be.’ Tilly Watson peered at Molly through quizzical eyes. ‘But if I was to tell you the truth… I’d say as how I’ve really enjoyed having another woman in the house.’ Here she chuckled and fell back in the chair. ‘Even if I’m a good twenty year older than you,’ she reluctantly admitted. Her gaze remained intent on Molly’s face, and when Molly smiled, it came to her not for the first time how astonishingly lovely this young woman was. Wasn’t it strange, she asked herself, how the most gentle and beautiful of souls were always the most vulnerable and how they were ill-used by others. But then, she reminded herself, wasn’t it always the very same? The fiercest and most cunning would survive on the blood of those meeker, gentler creatures. Yet wasn’t it also true that the Lord himself promised, ‘The meek will inherit the earth’.