The Weaver's Daughter

Book 1: The Weavers Trilogy

by Lilian Harry

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

The Weaver's Daughter was first published in paperback under the name Donna Baker. In the 1800s in the Midlands, it's a hard life for the weavers of Kidderminster - beautiful carpets spring from the looms they work, but life is not always so neatly woven. So it is for the Himley family - already struggling to get by, they must find a way of coping when their daughter, Bessie, is raped and disappears with her brother Tom to London, suspected of murder. But hope comes in the form of Rebecca, their youngest daughter. A job in service for the Pagnel family, owners of the carpet factory, means a chance of different life for Rebecca. As she gradually rises to the position of housemaid, she gets a glimpse of a world far removed from that she was born to. When love beckons, she is unsure - following your heart can be dangerous, and for Becky will it be her saving or her downfall?

Release date: April 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 383

Sample

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the day that Rebecca Himley was born, Admiral Lord Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar and was killed in the doing of it.

There were those in Kidderminster who were following the reports of the wars in their daily newspapers, and those who gleaned news from neighbours and workmates; but they were not of the Himley
household. William was too occupied at his loom, for he had been forced to ‘play’ for the whole of the previous week and needed to complete his piece by Thursday fall day. And Fanny
could think of nothing but the pain tearing through her body. Battles far away were nothing to the screaming muscles of her womb, and even the carpet on which their livelihood depended would take
second place until the pain was over and the new baby here at last. A new son or daughter – to live or die.

Bessie was with her, only five years old but already a handy little thing – her face white as she watched her mother’s struggles, yet still able to do the midwife’s bidding and
lend a hand, ready with the rags Mrs Davies had demanded, and quick to hold a cracked cup of water to her mother’s lips when she gasped for it. Bessie – the last child Fanny had borne
to live more than a few days. And even though she seemed healthy enough now, who was to say she would ever grow up to bear her own children? Only the very fortunate survived accident, disease or
plain starvation in these hard times.

‘Nearly there now, Mrs Himley.’ The midwife’s voice was encouraging. ‘Here, give me that rag, Bessie girl. That’s right . . . One last good push now, and it’s
born. You’ll have your baby in your arms any minute.’ She knew as well as Fanny that the baby’s chances of living were no better than those of any of the other babies born in the
past four years. And that if it did survive the birth, it would probably not see its first birthday. Yet the will to bring a new life into the world was as strong in her now as it had ever been,
stronger than it was in Fanny herself, who just wanted the whole business to be over and done with.

With one last tremendous effort, Fanny gathered her strength to meet the rising wave of pain. Her body embraced it, welcomed it, used it with a thrust that had her half off the pallet of straw
on which she lay. She felt the hard head open her as if she were a door, the shoulders widen the opening until she knew she must split in two; even two tiny elbows pressed into her flesh as though
the baby itself shared her urgency to have done with it. Briefly, she knew she could stand no more, that the baby must be born now or both of them die. And then, with one final surge of flesh and
blood and water, it was over. There was an exclamation from the midwife, a cry from Bessie; and, after a moment’s breathless silence, a roar of fury from the one whose voice had never been
heard before, who had until this moment had no voice nor any breath to use one.

Son or daughter? Fanny lay back, exhausted. There were women who found birthing easier the more they experienced it, who dropped their babes as casually as if they were setting down a bucket of
water. She had never been one of them.

‘It’s a girl,’ Mrs Davies said. ‘A fine one, Mrs Himley. Big and strong. Here. Have a look.’

Weakly, Fanny lifted her head. A girl. Another one to suffer as she had suffered, as Bessie would suffer, as all women must. And big and strong – likely to live.

She would be better drowned, like a kitten.

‘Hold her,’ the midwife urged, and mechanically Fanny held out her arms.

The baby was placed against her breast. Almost without meaning to, Fanny folded her arms around the slippery body, feeling its warmth, its trembling, the beating of the tiny heart against her
own. The shape of it was moulded against her abdomen as it had, until moments ago, been inside the same wall of skin and flesh and muscle. Her daughter. Living – and, after all, as likely as
not to go on living.

Slowly, she turned her head and looked down at the tiny, naked body, still covered in its greyish slime.

Rebecca looked back at her mother. Her eyes were dark even then, brown as the horse-chestnuts young Tom played with in the autumn, and their glance was straight and direct. Above them were dark
brows, thick as the hair which covered the small, pulsating head like black velvet. And the mouth, the soft, baby mouth which was only minutes old, was already set in determination.

Fanny caught her breath. She had borne many children, and so far only two had lived. Of the others, some had been born already dead, some had sighed for a few minutes, a few hours, before
drifting out of reach. Two had seen their first birthdays, one even learning to walk, and another, born already damaged, had hung on in misery until he was eighteen months old.

None of them had looked like this.

None of them had looked at her with eyes that were already wise, telling her so clearly, in the first moments of life, that they meant to survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The clatter of her father’s loom had been in Rebecca’s ears from the moment of her birth. She grew up to take for granted the cumbersome iron frame that stood at
one end of the cottage with the bobbins of coloured wool ranged beside it. The sight of her father working feverishly from early morning until late at night was one she had always known. The
spectacle of first Tom, then Bessie, working beside him as his drawer was familiar as that of her mother winding the bobbins in the warehouse where she went each day, taking Rebecca with her until
she was old enough to stay at home to learn in her turn to be a draw-girl.

‘Seems there ought to be more than this for you,’ Fanny said as they hurried along the banks of the Stour where freshly dyed yarn was being washed. ‘I don’t know what . .
. Service, that’s hard work but at least it’s out of the way of the looms. I grew up in service. But your father’d not hear of it. He’s like all the weavers; independence
means more to him than a full belly, though he’d soon squall if it were ale he lacked.’

Rebecca hardly heard her. She was gazing at the men as they perched on their small platforms over the river, holding brightly coloured skeins of wool in the water on long poles. Loose dye
swirled out of the bundles, turning the water to a gaudy, shifting pattern of red, green, yellow and blue. Too soon, the colours merged into each other and the river became a turbid flux of murky
soup. But for those first few moments it was a brilliant display; a hint of the patterns that would be woven later by weavers like her father.

The yarn came from out in the country, her mother said, from sheep that grazed in the fields. Some of it came from much further away, from Yorkshire, but Fanny was vague as to exactly where
Yorkshire was. The yarn came to Kidderminster, that was all that mattered, brought by carts from spinners or their agents to the dye-houses near the carpet manufacturers’ warehouses. But
there was always too much dye to be absorbed by the wool, and it was this excess that Rebecca saw being washed out in the Stour.

‘Water’s good for dyeing hereabouts,’ Fanny observed, pausing too to watch as the skeins were swished about in the running water. ‘They say it’s because of the
ironworks up the way . . . Come on, Rebecca, do. I’ll be late, and you know what that means – no money and we don’t eat tonight.’

She grasped Rebecca tightly by the hand and dragged her on along the riverbank to the workshop. Most of her fellow-workers were already there, taking off the sacking that served them as coats
and sitting down at their winding-frames, their busy fingers beginning to wind the coloured wool around the spindly wooden frames and on to the bobbins.

Rebecca sat on the floor in a corner, playing with a few scraps of wool. She watched her mother and the other women, listened to conversation she did not understand and let her mind stray
outside again, to the river that ran so clean into the town and so dirty as it left it. Where did it come from, that river, and where did it go? Her world was small and narrow, yet there were
disturbing hints of something bigger outside the boundaries of her own knowledge. Places with names like Yorkshire and Scotland, Birmingham and Wilton. There was another place, too – London,
where the King lived.

Rebecca wasn’t too clear about the King. He was a very important man, she knew that, and she pictured him as being rather like Mr Bradwell, her mother’s employer, only somewhat
fatter, and riding everywhere in a carriage made of gold.

But there was something strange about the King. Her mother and the other women were talking about it now.

‘Gone mad, they say. And the Prince is going to be Regent in his place. Look after things for him.’ The speaker shook her head. ‘It just shows, even folks like royalty are just
like the rest of us really. Doesn’t matter how rich they are.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind some of their gold all the same for that,’ Fanny said. ‘Mad or not . . . At least he’ll be comfortable. Warm and fed. Looked after.’
She sighed and Rebecca saw without understanding the tired lines on her grey face. ‘He won’t have to sit winding bobbins all day and wonder how to feed a family, or if
there’ll be any money left over on fall day, when his man’s been at the tavern till all hours.’

The other women yelped with laughter at the picture she had conjured up, and Bill Saunders, the overseer, came into the shed, his face stern. ‘What’s all this noise, then? You should
be getting on with your work, not gossiping. I want all these skeins wound by dinner-time, there’s a new batch just come in from the dye-house and Mr Bradwell’s in a hurry for
it.’ He marched around the shed, glancing with disapproval at the work being done. ‘You idle lot! You’re winding too loose – look at this. I suppose you think I won’t
know?’ His face red with anger, he wrenched Fanny’s bobbin from its spindle and tossed it the length of the shed. As it rolled away, it unwound a trail of blue yarn, undoing all the
work that Fanny had done that morning. She watched hopelessly, knowing that it would be docked from her wage, meaning effectively no pay for that day, and Rebecca saw her eyes mist with tears she
was already too exhausted to shed.

A feeling of helpless rage rose in the child’s heart. She jumped up from her corner, knocking over one of the winding frames as she did so. Bill Saunders was already halfway down the shed
but at the sudden commotion he turned and Rebecca flew at him, her fists clenched as if she were about to pummel him. He caught at her wrists and held her away from him so that her flying feet
could not reach his shins.

‘What’s this then? Who is this little spitfire?’

Fanny got up hastily and came forward, her face anxious and frightened.

‘It’s my Becky, sir. She don’t mean no harm – she’s got a bit of a temper but we’re taming her. Her father’ll take the strap to her, sir, the minute we
get home – she won’t cause no more trouble—’

‘She’d better not—’ the overseer began, but his voice was drowned by Rebecca’s cries as she struggled against his callous strength, trying to wrench her wrists away
from his hands, wriggling frantically in her efforts to get at him.

‘Let me go! Let me go! You ent got no right – me mam’s done her best, she’s worked hard all morning and now you’ve gone and spoilt it. She
weren’t winding loose, she never does, it’s just you, you’re cruel and hard and—’

‘Becky, stop it!’ Fanny’s voice was agonised. She pulled at her daughter’s shoulders, trying to drag her away, trying at the same time both to quieten her and
calm her. ‘Be quiet, for mercy’s sake. You’ll lose me my job. Becky!’

‘But it ent fair! It’s always him as is right – never us. You has to work and work and nobody cares – it ent fair!’ Rebecca renewed her struggles
and actually managed to catch Saunders a sharp kick on the shin. He swore and jerked her closer, giving her a slap on the ear with one hand before he began to rub his leg. Fanny took the
opportunity to pull Rebecca away and dealt her a smack on her other ear. Rebecca put her hands up to her head and began to cry, staring at her mother in astonishment and dismay. Why had
Mam hit her? Hadn’t she been trying to help? It wasn’t fair – none of it was fair. Why shouldn’t she say so?

Fanny turned to the overseer.

‘Mr Saunders, I’m that sorry. She don’t understand – she’s only a little girl. Please, don’t throw me out – we can’t do without the money and
I’ll work twice as fast, I swear I will. Her dad’ll leather her when we get home. She won’t do it again, I’ll see she won’t—’ Her voice went on, begging
and pleading, while Rebecca listened, her mind cringing at the quavering subservience in Fanny’s voice. Her mam was worth six of that man any day. All he did was walk about shouting while
women like her mother slaved at their winding frames, their fingers raw and bleeding from handling the yarn. Why should Fanny have to beg and plead like that? Why shouldn’t Rebecca say what
was no more than the truth?

But she did not speak again. Her head was ringing from the blows she had been given and she didn’t want any more. One of the other women came forward and slipped her arms around
Rebecca’s shoulders, leading her back to her corner. She sat Rebecca down and went back to her own work, keeping her eyes on the yarn she was winding. The other women did the same. Nobody
wanted Bill Saunder’s fury to be turned on them.

‘Please,’ Fanny whispered, ‘don’t turn us away, Mr Saunders.’

Bill Saunders stared at her. His face was red with anger, his small eyes bulging. But Fanny was one of his best workers and he knew that if he were to lose her it would mean getting another
woman and training her. And the work was needed. The weavers would be wanting those bobbins.

‘All right,’ he said grudgingly, and Fanny heaved a sigh of relief. ‘All right, we’ll overlook it this time. But you keep an eye on that girl of yours. See she behaves
herself in future. I’m not having no bit of a wench flying at me the way she did – kicking and scratching and all. Does it again, she’ll be out, and you with her. So
mind.’

‘Yes, sir, I will, I swear. Thank you sir.’ Fanny hurried back to her frame and began to wind a new bobbin, her fingers trembling. The overseer watched her for a moment, his face
hard; then he gave Rebecca one last glance and turned away.

Rebecca sat very still. She looked at the scraps of wool she had been making into a doll, trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

It wasn’t fair. But nobody seemed to think that it should be. And a lot of other things weren’t fair either, and nobody seemed to think they ought to be put right.

But why was Bill Saunders so much better than her mother? What made him the one who could shout and throw things and never get into any trouble for it? What was the difference between him and
her mother, her father, the rest of the weavers and dyers and bobbin-winders?

On her eighth birthday, Rebecca became her father’s draw-girl.

She scarcely needed instruction, knowing the process as well as she knew how to draw water from the well in the yard that served the little row of cottages.

‘Are you listening?’ William Himley growled, and she snapped to attention, watching as he demonstrated what she must do. ‘There’s thirteen hundred of these
“simple” cords, going through these brass eyes to the box of bowls where the pulleys are – d’you see that? Five colours – that’s two hundred and sixty ends of
each. The lashes are tied here, see, and what you have to do is catch hold of that first lash and pull all the cords towards you. That separates them from the others, so you’ve got all the
yarns of one colour.’ He gave her a sharp look. ‘Have you got that, girl?’

‘Yes, Father. And then I pull them down so that the ends are up above the new bit of carpet.’

‘Hm. I see you’ve been watching your sister. Now, this is the sword, this bit of wood. You put that in through the width of the weave and hold the yarn up so you can get the terry
wire in.’ He slid a long, thin blade, much more like a sword than the five-inch-wide wooden board, into the raised pile and withdrew the sword. Then he worked the big wooden treadles with his
feet so that half the linen was raised above the surface. Taking the wooden shuttle on which the yarn was wound, he passed it behind the raised chain, lowered it, gave the weave a couple of blows
with his steel comb to force it closer together, raised the other half and threw in the next ‘shoot’. ‘That’s woven in that lash. And now we start again. You think you can
manage it?’

‘Yes, Father.’

Rebecca spoke with docile obedience, knowing that her father’s short temper would tolerate nothing else, but even so he gave her a second sharp glance, as if suspecting her of insolence,
before grunting: ‘Right, let’s try it then. And remember, you’re going to have to work all the hours I do, it’ll be no use complaining you’re tired or hungry. This is
proper, grown-up work; you’re not a baby now.’

‘No, Father.’ Rebecca scarcely understood what he meant; she had never felt like a baby. Always, she had been expected to do whatever jobs she could manage – helping to sort
the coloured yarns at the winding-shed, keeping the smaller children quiet as she grew older, scrubbing potatoes for the family supper.

As for being tired and hungry – these were a natural part of everyday experience. Since 1808, when Rebecca was only three, life for carpetmakers had been growing steadily harder, and there
was no sign of any improvement. Half the weavers in Kidderminster were out of work; one of the largest manufacturers, Mr Broom, had laid off half his workforce of seven hundred, and it was no
better in the other big carpet factories. Men roamed the streets, living on a poor relief that was stretched to its limits, and the soup kitchens were besieged by starving weavers and their
families.

‘Serves ’em right for giving up their independence,’ William grunted. ‘Weavers shouldn’t be working for masters – we’ve always been our own masters.
Look at me, got my own loom and as long as the yarn’s there I can weave it and no one to tell me different.’

‘That’s all right so long as there’s someone to buy your piece,’ Fanny snapped. ‘What do you do if you go back on fall day and Mr Taylor says he don’t want
it? Going to set up as agent on your own, are you?’

William glowered at her. ‘That’ll never happen. They’ve supplied us with the yarn, they’re honour bound to buy it back.’

‘So long as you take it back in time,’ Fanny said bitterly. It had happened more than once that William had been late with his piece – and if it were not returned at precisely
the correct time on fall day (either Thursday or Saturday) then it would be refused. And that meant another week on only Fanny’s wage, a week of potatoes and little else, with no yarn to
weave; a week of gnawing hunger and ‘play’ as the weavers bitterly called such enforced idleness, with William’s temper growing worse as he slumped out of the house each morning
to loiter in the streets with other idle weavers, and spend the few farthings he had managed to keep to himself in the tavern.

‘Always money for drink,’ Fanny said caustically. ‘You never go short of that, never mind if the boy needs boots or Bessie a pinafore. Never mind that we didn’t eat at
all yesterday and if it weren’t for old Mag giving Rebecca a crust now and then she’d be in her grave with the rest of the babbies. Ah, and lucky to be there too, if you want to
know.’

‘I don’t. And you can stop your groaning, woman. We don’t live so bad – there’s plenty worse off than us. Only three children, and with young Tom bringing in three
shilling a week from Butts, and Bessie due to start as draw-girl there now Becky’s old enough to work for me, we don’t do so bad.’

‘No, not until there’s more lay-offs and we’re all at home to play together. And nothing coming in at all. It’ll be the parish for us then, Will Himley, independence or
no. Independence!’ she snorted. ‘A fine thing for them as can afford it.’

Her husband gave her a black look and stamped out of the house. Rebecca, watching from the heap of sacks where she sat in a corner, heard his footsteps go away up the cobbled street. Fanny
sighed and turned to the sagging basket which held the potatoes she had saved for tonight’s supper.

‘Why aren’t people buying carpets now?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Have they got enough?’ She had tried often to picture the kind of house where people lived who actually
bought the carpets her father wove. Where they laid them on the floor – on the floor! – and walked on them, apparently oblivious of the mud that must come off their boots and
obscure the beautiful colours. There was nothing on the floors Rebecca knew, other than an occasional length of Kidderminster ‘stuff’ – rough, of no particular colour or pattern
but serving to soften the worst of the chill hardness of the floor.

‘People never have enough – people with money,’ Fanny answered vaguely. ‘No, it’s not that – it’s summat to do with these wars we’re having with
the Frenchies. Don’t ask me why a lot of queer foreigners should have anything to do with us here in Kidder, but that’s what they say.’ She dropped a potato in the pan of water
she had placed ready by the fire. ‘Not that it matters to us – whatever happens, we’ll always get worst of it.’

‘You used to work in a house with carpets, didn’t you, Mam?’ Rebecca asked, knowing the answer but wanting a story and wanting, for a moment at least, to take the grey
weariness out of her mother’s face.

As she had hoped, the tired lines softened and the eyes brightened a little.

‘Ah, up at Mr Pagnel’s – I were in service there, could’ve done well for myself too. I hoped to rise to be parlourmaid and would have if I hadn’t wed your
father.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, it’s a fine place, the Pagnels’ house – big rooms, bigger than this whole row of cottages put together, and carpets spread over all the
floors – such colours, you wouldn’t believe. The housekeeper told me some of them came from places like Turkey and Persia. Not that we had carpets in the servants’ quarters, mind.
And we worked hard – oh yes, we worked all right. Up at five in the morning, I was, to clear out the grates and blacklead and polish them before the family was about. And never off my feet
till I went to bed at ten, if I was lucky. But you got good meals there, and clean clothes to wear, and a proper bed to sleep in, even if ’twere freezing in winter and roasting in summer up
under that roof. Ah.’ She looked back with the rose-misted spectacles of nostalgia to days that had been harder than she remembered. ‘We had some good times there. That were when Mr
Jeremiah were a lad, of course.’

‘Why doesn’t Bessie go into service, instead of being a draw-girl?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Our Tom comes home too tired to stand when he’s working twelve and twelve, and
he’s three year older than she. Wouldn’t she be better up at Mr Pagnel’s?’

Another potato dropped into the water. Fanny’s mouth tightened. She disliked the twelve and twelve system as much as anyone and resented the broken nights when Tom came in dropping with
fatigue at one in the morning, having worked since one the previous afternoon. The system which required weavers to share a loom, keeping it working between them for the full twenty-four hours of
each day, was universally unpopular and ate away at the independence of which weavers were so jealous. But there – nobody was truly independent, and if you wanted the work, and the wage, you
had to do as you were bid. And with both work and money short at present, even twelve and twelve would have been welcome. As it was, few weavers went to work without the fear that today might be
the day they were sent home again with nothing in their pockets.

‘Bessie go into service? Your father’ll not hear of it. He’s like the rest of them – sees himself a cut above the folk who have to take orders from others. Though what he
thinks he’s doing when he goes to collect his yarn and bobbins of a Tuesday morning . . .’ She dropped the third, and last, potato into the water, and felt in the pocket of her skirt.
‘Here, child, here’s a farthing – go and see if old Thomas will let you have a bone for some gravy to go with these potatoes.’ She watched Rebecca scamper away up the muddy
street. ‘And what’ll become of you, my girl?’ she muttered to herself. ‘A draw-girl like your sister until some young cock gets you in the family way? And then slave and
grind away, with a babby a year and never a sight of anything better . . .’ She turned away and lifted the pan on to the fire. ‘Service . . . it might be hard, but it’s bound to
be better than this – if only Will could see it.’

But William Himley could not see it. And this week, Bessie had gone with Tom to begin working as a draw-girl in the factory and Rebecca had taken her place at her father’s side, inserting
first the wooden sword and then the thin blade of the terry wire to raise the pile for him. Over and over again, for hour after hour – first the sword, then the wire, now the sword, now the
wire . . . until she felt she would scream with the sheer tedium of it, and from the growing ache in her legs and back.

But there was nothing to be done about it, no use in complaining. At the slightest hint of flagging, the slightest droop of her eyelids, her father would cuff her back into attention. And the
gnawing in her belly, the aches and the pains and the boredom would all have to be relegated to the back of her mind as she concentrated once more on her work. Sword, wire – sword –
wire – sword – wire – until once again she thought she must scream or go entirely mad.

And again, did neither; simply acquired another layer of toughness, another fibre of determination never to give in.

Bessie was delighted to be leaving her father’s loom and going to work in the bigger shed owned by Mr Butts down near the river. There were other girls there, girls and
boys too of her own age, working on the looms that Albert Butts kept clattering day and night. Twelve and twelve wasn’t new to Bessie; she had worked long enough hours when William, after
keeping St Monday too well at the beginning of the week, had been forced to stay at his loom until late into the night in order to finish his piece by fall day. She had even helped him with the
shears sometimes, wielding the big, heavy tool almost as dexterously as he did himself to snip off long ends and make the pile of the carpet smooth and even.

But it had been a lonely life with only her father for company, and William Himley was a silent, taciturn man. His weaving was good because that was the way he earned a living, and because he
saw himself as an independent man, licking no master’s boots. He was a weaver because his father had been a weaver, and his grandfather too, in the days when Kidderminster had been known for
its worsteds, its silks and bombazines, its poplins and prunellas. He had never thought of taking any other trade and it did not occur to him that any of his children would do so. And so each one,
on reaching the age of eight, became his drawer and went on to work in the trade, bringing in the extra few shillings that enabled Fanny to buy bread and meat and sometimes a pair of second-hand
boots or a shirt or shawl for one of them.

Bessie knew quite well that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep more than a penny or two of the money she earned. But on that first morning, stepping jauntily through the narrow streets to the
carpet shed, she cared nothing for that. It was the company she was looking forward to – the chatter of other girls, the glances of the boys. At thirteen, Bessie was as big as a girl three or
four years older, her slightly protuberant blue eyes bold, her red lips pouting. For months now she had been restless, eager to be out of the house at every opportunity, impatient with Rebecca and
half-shy, half-flirtatious with her brother Tom.

Near the factory, she saw another girl, a year or two older than herself, and hurried to catch up with her.

‘Nell! Thought you were going to call for us.’

The girl turned and her eyes brightened. ‘Well, Bess, so you’m come. I wondered if your dad’d let thee. You’ve been working for he long enough.’

‘Too long,’ Bessie said, tossing her tangled yellow hair. ‘Time our Becky did her turn. I been shut up with him till I thought I’d go mad with it. Now – tell us.
Who’s your fancy-boy this week?’

Nell giggled. ‘And who’s to say I’ve got a fancy-boy? We’re not all like you, Bess Himley, down by the canal bridge of a night.’

‘And how would you know I’d been there if you hadn’t been yourself?’ Bessie dug her elbow in her friend’s side and they both yelped with laughter. ‘Hey-up,
look at thi