Bill gave Lottie one more angry look for evidently being the worst wife in the world, and then stomped upstairs. There was a bang as the bedroom door slammed shut.

As soon as the door slammed shut upstairs, there was the creak of a door opening. Then light footfalls on the stairs. They stopped somewhere near the bottom.

Bill gave Lottie one more angry look for evidently being the worst wife in the world, and then stomped upstairs. There was a bang as the bedroom door slammed shut.

As the door slam reverberated through the house Lottie's eyes rolled with equal noise and she sighed. She considered if she had married the right man all those years ago. And not for the first time, either. Her confidant, the late Hannah had cautioned her "if yer certain..." but who had been her other choices?

John poured two cups of tea and put one down for his mother. "Sorry for walking in on you mid discussion with da there ma, I was half asleep still." He was truelly half asleep and hadn't woken up yet fully"

He glanced at his mother "dare I ask what happened?"

Quietly Kate slipped into the kitchen. A woolen jacket covered her night gown and her hair was messy. She put her hand on her mother's back to urge her in the direction of the table, where John had set a cup down for her. "Sit down, mam," she said gently.

There was a knock on the door.

Lottie heard the knock at the door and sighed deeply. It was probably that old witch up the street coming to complain about the noise at this hour. Holding her hand up to pause her children, the Blacke matricarch shuffled to the front door and opened it.

"Oh Look, it's Whitby's father of ta year. What do ye want?" It was Ben Bloody Ward, with his unruly beard, sallow skin, and harsher hand. Just the person she wanted to see at that moment.

Some time alone in the bedroom had cooled Bill off enough to regret his rage. Lottie had been wrong to shout at him and raise her hand like he was her child rather than her husband. She should have welcomed him home like a hero, celebrating him as a wonderful father for puncing that swine, Angus, in the face, and she should have been extra kind to him as she should know how awful a night in a cell would be for him. But that was not the wife he had. Lottie was as quick to anger as he was. Still, he felt bad for his own aggression. What did John make of all this? John was the black sheep of the family – no pun intended – and Bill still half-expected the young man to fall into his old habits sooner or later. But what sort of example had Lottie and he been just now? Had they been a bad example in the past? Were they to blame for the many faults of their children?

As he sat down on the bed to tie the laces of his work boots, he found his spirits lower than they had been last night, albeit a great deal calmer. It was the quiet resignation both he and his wife wore in the face of the many imperfections of their married life, a stoicism interrupted occasionally – and lately more frequently – by flaring tempers and thundering rows.

Bill’s fingers worked slowly. He was early for work and in no rush to go back downstairs. He found some comfort in the knowledge that at least he provided for his family. He had a stable job, went straight home on pay day to hand his wages over to his wife, and only drank what her prudent household management allotted to him. Och, and she had managed that household so admirably all these years. She was economical, hard working, smart… She was a good wife. They really ought to make a good team. They were to the outside world. The world beyond the prying eyes and battered ears of Oswy street anyway…

He sat up and turned his head to look at Lottie’s side of the bed. Despite all of Lottie’s qualities as a wife and his own efforts, there had been a distance, a barrenness, between them for a long time. He felt sorry about it, and equally helpless.

He got up at last and braced himself to go back down. He wanted to reconcile, but of course she would shout again. Of course she would refuse to acknowledge her own wrongs. Reluctantly, Bill opened the door and made his way to the stairs. Just then there was a knock.

Oh! What providence! Ben Ward! The one person Lottie probably still hated more than she hated her husband! Let him bear her wrath!

Amazed at his luck, Bill tiptoed down the stairs, passed quietly behind Lottie, avoiding eye contact with the bearded sacrificial lamb in the doorway, and disappeared through the back of the house. He took a deep breath once he had closed the back door behind him. Surely Lottie’s anger would subside once she had given Ben a piece of her mind. Surely when he got home tonight, all would be well…

Had Ben been kept in the police station overnight like Lottie’s husband, or worse, brought before a magistrate, his pride might have been broken. Perhaps it would even have forced him to reflect on his actions. But that was not what had happened. He had walked out of that police station and returned home with his head held high, certain in the knowledge that justice had prevailed.

Only one thing had shaken and humiliated him, and had brought the some degree of self-inspection in its course. Upon returning home and collecting his children (Will had gone to Maggie’s; Bram was staying with Rose and Andrew), he had learned that Anne had been entrusted to the care of Lottie Better-than-thou Blacke. It made no sense. If Rose or Maggie couldn’t house another, Anne could have gone to aunt Mary’s. She was family after all. His brother’s widow was sensible, well-mannered, and most importantly… he was on speaking terms with her – all qualities Lottie did not possess… Ben had decided Lottie was too much to handle after all the events of the day. He still had to work out whether there was any truth in that rich gits words about Tobias. He would go over in the morning.

The result was that he had barely slept. Not only had concern for Alice and questions about his own role in the situation eaten away at him. Past and possible future conversations with Lottie had also cluttered his still waking brain. Occasionally, he felt angry with Anne for using this situation to go to the Blackes’ against his explicit orders. More often, he felt bad for having forbidden it for so long. Most of all he felt ashamed: ashamed that it had been necessary in the first place for Anne to go somewhere else because her father had gotten arrested, ashamed for his past behaviour towards both her and Lottie, ashamed for his childish stubbornness in not relenting.

The truth was, he had regretted the argument and his own behaviour for quite some time now, and part of him had wanted to relent. He had come to see how miserable Anne was for not being allowed to go over to Oswy street. The poor child had come to cling to Lottie like to the mother she didn’t have, and he had taken that away from her over his own conflict with Lottie. He had been happy when young Kate had come to apologise for her words and he was able to allow the girls at least to interact without ‘giving in’. He had debated with himself, even prayed for a change of heart, over exactly that stubborn inability to ‘give in’. But he had not been able to get himself to approach Lottie and smooth things over. Lottie was hardly the first person to criticize his parenting, but her criticism had cut deepest. When she criticized him, it felt as though Hannah stood before him and condemned him for how he had failed their children over and over again. The scene at the harbour and Alice’s situation came to mind again. Oh he felt it often. And he had felt it tenfold during his short, haunted sleep that night. When had woken up early the next morning, it was clear to him what had to be done.

And so when he knocked on the Blackes’ door that morning, he was in quite a humble and conciliatory state. Then Lottie greeted him with an insult and the fragile cup of reconciliation almost cracked. He opened his mouth. But as if by divine intervention, he was distracted for a moment by the sight of Bill Blacke sneaking out of the house with his shoulders drawn up and his eyes cast down.

What the hell...?

His mouth hung open stupidly before he recovered, the sting of Lottie’s words mostly gone. “Thank ye, Lottie, for lookin’ after our Anne for t’ night…” he said as kindly as he could. “I’ll take her off yer hands now…”

In that moment, Lottie was numb, filled with a disgust that seemed to clog her every pore. Men. Ugh. The dominate species were feckless, utterly incapable. As Bill slicked past them both and away, Lottie pondered how much the world would be a better place if it were burnt down, rebuilt, and run by woman. But the sisters of Eve were not in charge, in fact the system was entirely designed to put them on the back foot. Leadership by the biggest knob. There was precious little Lottie could do about it. So, why fight it?

"Wait there." She was still in charge of this house, though and if he wanted to challenge that, she would slap him into the twentieth-century. And because it was Ben, she would enjoy doing so.

She slowly made her way upstairs to where she knew her daughters to be. When did she start thinking of Anne as her own? Anne wasn't hers damn it but every parting from her felt like a stabbing for Lottie. One day Anne would be in Lottie's family for good and that would be that.

"Anne, I am so sorry dear, but yer father is here to collect ye an' go home. Ye know how I feel about it dear."