‘Will she be back tomorrow?’

‘Not tomorrow, no,’ Tilly told her firmly. ‘That don’t give her much time to get it all sorted out, does it, eh?’ She took her hands from the sink, where she was up to her elbows in dirty breakfast crockery, and with a gentle sigh she wiped them on her pinnie before resting them on the girl’s small shoulders. ‘Has your mammy ever left you before?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Would she leave you at all, if she didn’t have to?’

‘I don’t think so… no.’

‘Your mammy loves you bairns more than anything in the world. You know that, don’t you?’

For a long, painful moment there came no reply, and it was obvious to the onlooking woman that the child was fighting inside herself. When suddenly little Sal burst into tears and flung herself forward into the woman’s arms, Tilly crushed her tight in a loving embrace. ‘Go on, young ’un,’ she said softly, ‘you bawl your little heart out if you want.’ Which the child did. After a while she stepped back from the haven of Tilly’s arms. Wiping her eyes on the back of her hands, she looked up at Tilly, and the woman was astonished at the resolve in Sal’s face. ‘All right now, are you?’ she asked. Instead of an answer, she got yet more questions.

‘Me mammy’s not been taken away, has she? She’s not in trouble, is she? That awful man from Miss Nelly’s hasn’t got her, has he?’

‘Why!… I ain’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about, sweetheart.’ Tilly thought Sal’s ‘Miss Nelly’ and ‘that awful man’ must belong to some misadventure or other that Molly and her young ’uns had experienced during the time when they were trudging the streets. She might have gone deeper into the matter but she was presently more preoccupied with her son, Joe. Something was troubling her. Something that wouldn’t let her be. ‘Your mammy ain’t in no trouble… you’ve got my word on it.’ Quickly, she fished Molly’s note out of her pinnie pocket. ‘Look here. Your mammy wrote this… she left it on the table for me to find. It were there when I got up this morning.’ She handed it to the girl, who flattened it out on the slopstone, trying desperately to make head or tail of it. Thanks to Nelly, Sal could read a few words. Molly’s spelling, however, posed a difficulty for the child.

‘Well?’ Tilly was amused to see how Sal turned the note every which way in order to decipher it. ‘Can you tell what it says?’ She assumed that Molly must have taught the girl about words.

‘I know my mammy’s name,’ Sal said proudly, pointing to the word ‘Molly’ at the bottom of the note, ‘and I think that’s your name there?’ She showed Tilly her own misspelt name.

‘That’s a clever lass,’ encouraged Tilly, pointing to the main body of the note. ‘Can you tell what all that says?’