Something else even more disturbing had come to light since Marlow had taken Mick Darcy into his confidence. Only yesterday the young man who adored Molly had returned to Eanam Wharf, dejected and weary after scouring the country far and wide in search of her. The closest he had come to finding Molly was when he paid a seaman for ‘certain information’ which had taken Mick to a café beside the Liverpool docks. The proprietor – a surly creature by the name of Bill Craig – had spoken badly of Molly, calling her ‘the worst kind o’ trouble… a bad mistake that he had been glad to see the back of’. Apart from that, he would say little else, except to warn Mick ‘if you’ve any sense at all, you’ll steer clear o’ that one… a wicked little baggage if yer ask me!’ Mick’s response was a sombre word of advice that left the disgruntled fellow in no doubt at all that if he should continue besmirching Molly’s good character, he would find himself answering to Mick Darcy!

Since that particular encounter, there had been no word of Molly or the children. To the disheartened Mick, it was almost as though she had disappeared from the face of the earth. Disillusioned and hoping against hope that Marlow and Emma might have news of her, he had come home to Blackburn after many weeks away. But there was no news. Even the private detective hired by Marlow Tanner had uncovered nothing of Molly’s whereabouts.

Restless and afraid that she might disturb the sleeping Marlow, Emma draped a shawl about herself and went from the bedroom on soft footsteps. She still could not come to terms with it all; especially in the face of Mick Darcy’s astonishing revelation that ‘Molly was brought up by an old tramp… an eccentric old dear known as old Sal’. When Mick was questioned further by Marlow, it was discovered that the old tramp’s full name was Sal Tanner – Marlow’s very own sister.

Realizing that Molly was one and the same girl who had gone out of her way to ensure that old Sal did not suffer a pauper’s grave, Marlow immediately set about moving heaven and earth to track her down. There was so much that he owed her, so much that he wanted to ask her with regards to the sister he had loved and lost. On top of which, Emma herself had a great need to speak to Molly, the question of her watch chain being paramount.

But to Emma’s mind, there was something else. Something both unnerving and exciting. Some deeper instinct that would not easily be denied. A strange, insistent feeling in her bones that maybe… just maybe, this young woman called Molly might be her own daughter. The seed of her forbidden love with Marlow. The same girl-child she had given birth to, and who was pronounced stillborn, and left in the gutter as the prison-waggon drew away. Knowing how there was nothing to substantiate such a phenomenon, and in the wake of her own illness these past weeks, Emma had been careful not to voice her deep feelings to anyone. Not to Marlow, who had been deeply concerned for Emma’s health of late. And not even to Nelly, who over so many long years in exile had been Emma’s loyal friend and confidante. Nor could Emma bring herself to speak to the priest about her troubled soul, for she had turned her back on the Church when her only son had been so cruelly taken from her.