‘It weren’t only me who started then,’ Molly reminded her. ‘What about Vera?’ Normally Molly would never point the finger at anyone, but she was desperate. She needed this job, and the big cellar room that went with it. The proprietor had already promised that, if she worked well, the children could live down there with her ‘so long as they keep quiet and don’t become a nuisance’. She knew it was an arrangement that his wife had never agreed to. But the promise was made and Molly had skivvied her fingers to the bone to keep him to it. Besides which, she was innocent of the thieving. It hadn’t escaped her notice that the other new chambermaid – who also happened to be a relative of this surly woman – had a full purse lately, and money to spare. ‘Have you questioned her?’ Molly wanted to know.

‘How dare you suggest that my sister’s daughter is a thief!’

‘Well, I’m no thief neither. I won’t be sacked for something I didn’t do.’

The woman laughed at Molly’s defiance. ‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you?’ A particularly nasty smile came over her face. ‘In that case, we should send for the authorities… don’t you agree?’

Her words were met by a thick silence. Molly knew she was bluffing, but she dared not take the chance. What if they did come? What if they found out who she was, and where she’d come from? What about the children? She might be delivered into the hands of Justice Crowther! Dear God! The very thought filled her with terror. She’d be hanged for the murder of that café owner, Bill Craig. Hanged, as sure as day follows night. No, she couldn’t risk it. Daren’t risk it.

‘Well?’ The woman’s voice was a sneer.

‘I’ll not leave without my dues though.’ Molly brazened it out, knowing that she had lost the argument.

‘Your “dues”, eh?’ snorted the woman. ‘You won’t get a brass farthing!’

‘The lass is entitled to her dues.’ The proprietor surprised them both by stepping forward and taking a sum of money from his pocket. This he handed to Molly saying, ‘We’ll not keep back what you’ve sweated for.’ He cast a cursory glance at his wife, ‘Because then we’d be the “thieves”, wouldn’t we, eh?’ He pressed the money into Molly’s hand. ‘Best go quietly, eh, gal?’ he suggested kindly. And that was just what Molly did.

As she pounded the streets of London, desperately searching for a new place of work and a home where she could bring the children, how different it might have been if only Molly had known that the best thing that could have happened was for the hotel proprietor’s wife to call the authorities as she had threatened.

Molly’s belief that the authorities were searching for her was very true, because even at that moment there were a number of people scouring the streets of London for Emma Tanner’s daughter, including the frustrated private detective hired by Marlow. There was another also. The man who was never far from Molly’s mind; the man she loved but, for so many reasons, had sent away. Mick Darcy was her strength and her comfort during the dark, lonely hours. He was also a great source of pain and unhappiness, for she was convinced that he was lost to her for ever. How it would have gladdened her heart to know that, even now, he was not far away, searching for her, determined that he would not go home without the woman he adored.