The more Molly confided in Tilly Watson, the more she felt a great burden being lifted from her shoulders. It was true that ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’. Only Molly had more than one trouble. She had a whole batch of them, and each one had bred another, until now – try as she might – she could see no way out of the cage they had made for her!

‘Ah, you poor little sod!’ exclaimed Tilly, her eyes popping out like bright buttons at the awful tale. ‘And you’ve kept all this to yourself this long time? Why! It’s a wonder you’ve not gone crazy with it all.’ She patted Molly’s hand affectionately. ‘You poor little sod,’ she repeated, gawping at Molly in wonderment. ‘Mind you… I’d rather it were you than me who’s made an enemy of that Justice Crowther. By! He’s a right evil bastard and no mistake!’ A look of horror crossed her features, until in a tick, she was staring at Molly again, urging her, ‘Go on then, Molly… so where did you go from here? What adventures befell you? Oh, and what in God’s name made you come back… when you knew that the Justice might still be looking for you? No wonder the first thing you did when you came out of that fever was to beg me not to tell anybody you were here!’ She felt herself break out in a cold sweat and began feverishly dabbing at her forehead and face with a grubby hankie snatched from her pinnie pocket. ‘Oh, dear Lord!… To think what might have happened if he’d found out! What!… the bugger might have even come bursting into this very parlour!’

‘Now can you understand why I have to leave your house, Tilly? The last thing I want is that you should get involved.’

‘I see.’ Tilly Watson was never one to be intimidated and, as suddenly as she had broken out in a fearful sweat, she was calm again, and outraged that Molly should have been so persecuted by that fiend of the law that she had been forced to flee her own home. She said as much to Molly, and was reluctantly understanding when it was then explained to her that ‘I wouldn’t have been able to keep the house anyway, Tilly, because I couldn’t afford the rent after Jack went off… leaving me with yet another mouth to feed.’

As Molly finished her story, she held nothing back. In complete and utter trust of this sympathetic woman, she told everything; describing the weeks of living rough, her constant fear that the law was waiting round every corner; her hopeless search for Jack and, last of all, with heavy heart and in such a small, fearful whisper that even the silent listener in the passage could not hear this awful confession, she described how Bill Craig, the café proprietor, had attacked her… how they had struggled and she had struck out. ‘He fell to the floor… lifeless. Oh Tilly, I killed him! When they catch me, I’ll hang for sure.’ The tears flowed down Molly’s face as she thought of the three innocents sleeping upstairs. ‘What of them?’ she asked. ‘What of the children?’