Emma saw through Nelly’s ploy. And she loved her all the more for it. Reaching out her arms, she gripped Nelly’s shoulders and, keeping her at arm’s length, she gazed into her friend’s twinkling brown eyes with a veil of nostalgia in her own strong, anxious gaze. Those merry eyes had carried her back to when she and Nelly were young. All the joy of that time, all the pain, all the defiance, it was still there, as if it were only yesterday.

Fleeting images paraded through Emma’s turbulent mind, and paramount in these were the images of two children: one a newborn girl-child, and the other a boy already maturing towards manhood. Both children were hers and Marlow’s. Both had been conceived out of wedlock, and worse, they had been conceived when she was married to other men! Both were now lost to her and Marlow for ever.

Now Emma asked herself the same question she had asked time and time again since the death of her son: was she being punished for her sins? In her terrible grief, she had denounced God. Now she wondered whether there really were an Almighty that was unforgiving, more cruel than any mere mortal could conceive, totally without mercy. If that were so, then she had been right to denounce a God in his Heaven, for such an awful and powerful force could never be described as anything other than malicious. Therefore she regretted none of the harsh words which she had spoken in the churchyard on the day of her son’s funeral. The only truth that now stayed with her was that she had sinned, and she was being punished. Beyond that, her reasoning refused to go.

‘All right, Nelly… but take good care of yourself, won’t you?’

‘Don’t I allus?’ Nelly wrapped her two fists round Emma’s gloved hands and tenderly lifting them from her shoulders, she squeezed them in a frantic gesture, saying in a dangerously trembling voice, ‘Ooh, Emma, gal… let the good Lord smile on yer and bring yer both home safely.’ She was not surprised when Emma quickly withdrew her hands. But her mention of the ‘good Lord’ had been deliberate, because she had prayed with all her might for Emma to return to the faith. And she would go on praying.

‘Goodbye, Nelly.’ Emma leaned forward to kiss the weatherworn and ageing face that she knew as well as her own. ‘Just remember what I said… take good care of yourself.’ Nelly clung to her for a moment, and then they were parted.

…

Having suppressed her tears for Emma’s sake, Nelly’s resolve melted as the train pulled away in a rising cloud of steam, and soon she could no longer see Emma’s fluttering handkerchief for the blinding tears that tumbled down her face. ‘God keep you both safe,’ she murmured, in between rubbing at her eyes with the now soggy linen square.

After a few moments the train had gone from her sight. With a bowed head and heavy heart she turned away towards the ladies’ cloakroom. Here, she regained her composure, straightened her bonnet and smoothed out her cape. Then, fearful of the long, empty days ahead without her Emma, she emerged on to the platform once again.