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‘But at least it explains what was wrong with Mama. I thought she might end up in an asylum.’
    ‘It must have been very frightening for her,’ Beth said. ‘Especially as her own mother must have had her without a husband, or she wouldn’t have abandoned her. That place she grew up in was attached to a workhouse. I expect she was afraid that was where she’d end up.’
    ‘I’d never let that happen,’ Sam said stoutly. ‘But it will tie us.’
    ‘Whatever do you mean?’ Beth asked.
    He pursed his lips and frowned. ‘Pa didn’t leave much, and most of that was eaten up with the burial expenses and just living until I got work. Our joint wages are only just enough to scrape by on. But I’d hoped that in time Mama would marry again and we’d both be free.’
    Beth had never imagined her mother remarrying, and she said so.
    ‘Well, you’d better start hoping for it,’ he said with a tinge of sarcasm. ‘If you meet some chap who wants to marry you, he won’t want to be saddled with your mother and her baby too. And I hadn’t planned on staying put here for ever either. I want to see the world.’
    Beth wanted to reproach him for being selfish, but she couldn’t because she knew he wouldn’t really run out on them. ‘Let’s not worry about the future for the time being,’ she suggested. ‘Something will turn up, you’ll see.’
    It was a long, hot summer, the milk turning sour by mid-morning, privies and drains stinking to high heaven, leaves on trees drooping listlessly with a coating of dust. The city didn’t even become quiet once darkness fell because it was too hot for anyone to sleep. Babies cried, dogs barked, children played in the streets till all hours, and there were more drunken brawls outside the public houses than usual.
    Beth found each day in Hooley’s Hosiery a trial of endurance. By midday the shop windows got the full blast from the sun, and inside the temperature soared to over ninety degrees. Customers were tetchy and often very rude as they got her to open drawer after drawer of socks or stockings. Beth frequently had to bite her tongue to prevent herself answering back. In a high-necked black dress, with petticoats beneath, she was sweltering, her feet swelled and ached, and she often wondered why she’d once thought it would be marvellous to have a job.
    Sam fared better at his work, for the clerks’ office overlooked the sea, and with the windows wide open there was a cooling breeze. But with a stiff wing collar and a jacket, he too often admitted to nodding off in the heat or gazing longingly at the ships out at sea, wishing he was on one.
    But their mother was suffering even more. She had no appetite, she felt faint in the heat, and her ankles and legs were so swollen by mid-afternoon that she couldn’t walk. It alarmed Beth to see how thin and gaunt her face was becoming, yet her belly seemed to grow larger each day.
    The hot weather finally broke at the end of September, when it rained almost constantly for two weeks. At long last they could sleep at nights again, the streets were washed clean, and their mother began to eat a little more.
    Alice had apologized to Mrs Craven for her rudeness, and the neighbour was kind enough to pop in every day and help with a few of the heavier chores. Together the two women had dug out a stored box of baby clothes that had been both Sam’s and Beth’s, and another neighbour lent them a cradle.
    Winter didn’t set in until the end of November, but when it came it was with high winds and bitter cold. In the second week of December, when it was snowing, Beth arrived home on the Friday evening to find Mrs Craven in the kitchen, filling up a big pan with water to heat up on the stove.
    ‘She started around midday,’ the woman explained. ‘It was lucky I called in on the way back from the market. I want you to go and get Dr Gillespie to come and take a look at her.’
    Beth was immediately alarmed, but Mrs Craven gave her a