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carrying a baby. She hitched the baby on to her hip and looked at the little girl
     
    weeping in the doorway, a pathetic figure, very small and pale and ill-kempt and thin, standing there shaking violently. ‘What’s the matter, pet?’ she asked, and when Evie went on shaking and sobbing the woman peered into the passageway of the house and said, ‘Is your mam there? Hello, missus?’ The baby, affected by Evie’s sobs, began to cry too, though half-heartedly, merely in imitation, and the young mother knew it and paid no attention. ‘We can’t have this,’ she said, putting the baby down on the step, whereupon it began to bawl in earnest, feeling the cold even through its layers of shawls. She drew Evie to her and stroked her hair and said, ‘There, there,’ over and over again. When Evie was quieter, though her thin body still shook, the woman said, ‘Now what is it? What’s wrong? What’s your name, pet? Can’t you talk? Can’t you tell me?’ Choking, Evie managed to hiccup the words. ‘My grandma’s sick.’ ‘Are you on your own then?’ asked the woman anxiously, already seeing herself dragged into a mess she’d rather keep out of. ‘Isn’t there anyone else in the house? Where’s your mam? Where’s your dad? When will they be coming home? Where are they? Where can they be sent for?’
    But Evie was incapable of giving any information and the young woman knew she would have to go into the house and see where this sick grandmother was. Hesitantly, holding her baby with one arm, putting it back on her hip, she took hold of Evie’s hand with the other and allowed herself to be led up the stairs. She knew before she saw the old woman that she was dead and she stopped in the doorway of the bedroom and turned round. ‘You’ll have to come with me,’ she said, her tone now sharp and not as caressing as before. ‘Have you a key? We can’t leave the house open.’ Evie did know where the key was, a big iron thing hanging behind the front door and rarely used because they so rarely went out. The woman put it in her pocket. She seemed bad-tempered now, but Evie herself was calmer knowing responsibility had passed from her hands. She followed the woman down the lane eagerly, in her relief hardly noticing the cold. The woman hurried, her skirt flapping and her head bowed against the wind. Furtively, Evie looked about her. It was strange to be moving so fast instead of patiently keeping pace with her grandmother’s slow amble. It felt exciting, urgent, and she no longer felt terrified. She wondered where they were going but did not dare ask in case she was cast off.
    They passed St Cuthbert’s church and came out on to West Walls, hugging the crumbling old wall, keeping out of the narrow
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    road itself. But then, past Dean Tail’s cut, the woman veered right and stopped at a door and knocked on it. It opened quickly and another woman, also young, stood there and said, ‘You’ve taken your time, you’ll be late.’ ‘I know I’ll be late,’ Evie’s rescuer snapped. ‘It can’t be helped, it’s this kid, standing crying fit to burst in the lane and saying her grandma’s sick.’ Here she dropped her voice and whispered in the other woman’s ear. ‘What could I do?’ she went on, ‘I couldn’t leave her. And now what can I do? Who’ll I tell?’ They were all still standing on the doorstep but now the two women went inside and Evie followed, though they paid no heed to her. She had never, to her knowledge, been in any other house but her grandma’s, first in the village, that dim memory, and then in the lane. She peered about her nervously, feeling it was wrong to stare. The room wasn’t much better than her grandma’s, it was just as small, but there was a good fire burning, bigger than her grandma ever allowed, and a good smell of some kind of cake cooking. And there was a brightly coloured rag-rug on the stone floor with two small children sitting on it playing with pan lids