‘Not properly,’ Sal admitted.

‘Right then!’ Tilly ran her finger along each word, carefully reading it for Sal’s benefit. When she had finished, there was a brief silence, during which Sal was thinking hard on what her mammy had said. When at last she returned her attention to Tilly, her eyes were much brighter, and there was a little smile on her face.

‘Are we going to live in London then?’

‘It would seem so… if your mammy finds work and a place for you all.’

‘She does love us!… And she will come for us soon, won’t she?’

‘She said so, didn’t she?’ Tilly asked kindly. When Sal eagerly nodded, she told her, ‘There you are then. Now!… Can a poor woman get a bit o’ peace round here? You go off and play in the cellar with the others. Keep them all outta sight, mind… because that schooling fellow might come a-searching these ’ere parts!’

With serious face – that told Tilly how the girl would not be altogether happy until Molly was back – Sal went down the scullery steps towards the cellar, from where there came enough noise to satisfy her that Molly’s two younger bairns were not fully aware that their mammy had gone so far away.

Tilly knew that Sal would not stay long in the cellar. After a short while, she was proved right when Sal emerged to seat herself on the front doorstep, where she gazed wistfully up the cobbled street, watching for the familiar and much-loved figure of her mammy to come round the corner at any minute.

If it weren’t for her brother and sister depending on her, and the fact that she didn’t know the way to London, Sal might have been tempted to follow her mammy there and then.

Though little Sal stayed on the doorstep for the best part of the day, she was not rewarded for her vigilance. At supper-time she was told by Tilly, ‘Come in off that cold step, my girl… you’ve been out there quite long enough!’ Feeling both cramped and hungry, little Sal made small protest.

No sooner had little Sal sat herself round the big table in the centre of the parlour than Joe Watson let himself in the front door. On hearing his familiar footsteps, Tilly rushed into the passage. ‘Don’t you lot touch none of them muffins!’ she warned the little hungry souls assembled round the table. ‘Joe’s here now. We shall all enjoy us supper… when grace is said.’

There was such a forbidding, sullen look on her son’s face that Tilly’s joy at having him home was cruelly quashed. ‘Are you all right, Joe?’ she asked, watching him take off his flat cap, which he flung over the nail in the door. She was concerned to see what a strange, brooding mood he was in. ‘What’s kept you so late?… I’ve been worried. D’you know what the time is, eh? It’s gone eight o’clock.’ Still he made no response. Instead, he pushed past her and made straight for the front parlour. His foot was already over the threshold when Tilly urged, ‘Don’t be surly, Joe. Supper’s already laid out in the back parlour. We’ve none of us started, because I insisted that we wait for you.’ Coming closer to him now, she was deeply disappointed to realize that he had been drinking again. ‘Aw, Joe, you’ve never been drowning your sorrows in that ale house, have you?’