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anything. ‘Poor Millie,’ she went on, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. ‘She were a sweet, good soul, it ain’t never right she were took.’
    She perched on the edge of Belle’s bed then and smoothed back her hair from her face. ‘You all right, my lovely? Must ’ave shaken you up sommat chronic.’
    ‘I didn’t know nothing about it until Ma came down here with the policeman,’ Belle lied.
    Mog looked at her sharply. ‘Never! You with ears like a bat! You didn’t even hear the geezer shinning down the drainpipe into the back yard?’
    ‘Well, I did hear sommat,’ Belle admitted. ‘But I just thought it were a cat getting scraps from the bins.’
    Mog sat on the bed silently for a moment or two, her face looking younger and softer in the candlelight. ‘You was still up in Millie’s room when I left. What time did you come down?’ she asked eventually.
    Belle shook her head. ‘Don’t rightly know, I didn’t look at the clock. It wasn’t late, the house was quiet.’
    ‘Annie let the girls go to the music hall, ’cos of the snow. She only kept Millie and Dolly back. I was still here then and the girls made enough noise to wake the dead when they was leaving, all excited and that. Funny you never heard that and come on down!’
    Belle felt very uncomfortable now. Mog knew she was lying, just as she always did.
    ‘You fell asleep up there, didn’t you?’ Mog said worriedly. ‘I was going to come up and find you, but I thought yer ma might larrup you if she saw you up there. Reckoned you’d slink down later when it was all quiet.’
    Belle could feel tears welling up. She could never be sure her mother had any real feelings for her, but she had always felt Mog’s love thick and strong just by the way she spoke and looked at her. It was hard to lie to her, even though Annie must have had good reason to insist she should.
    Suddenly Mog’s eyes widened in horror. ‘You saw what happened!’ she exclaimed, clamping her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus! And your ma told you to say nothin’?’
    ‘Don’t,’ Belle said weakly. She so much wanted to blurt it all out, to cry and let Mog cuddle her till the fright went away. But when Annie gave an order, everyone had to obey. ‘Just accept I was here asleep.’
    Mog caught hold of Belle’s two hands and her small, normally twinkly eyes were cold and serious. ‘No good will come of lying about a killing,’ she insisted. ‘I shall tell Annie that tomorrow and I don’t care how much of a fuss she makes. Aside from it being wicked to let a murderer get away with his crime, any woman should know a young girl needs to talk about something like this, or it will give her nightmares. But I understand you made your ma a promise and I won’t force you to break it tonight.’
    Belle took that to mean she was going to give up questioning her for now and she felt both relief and disappointment in equal measures. The relief was because she knew if Mog was to keep on asking her things she would buckle and tell her the whole story, and Annie would be furious with her. But at the same time she was disappointed Mog wouldn’t go against Annie’s wishes because she so much wanted to talk about what she’d seen.
    ‘Go to sleep now.’ Mog nudged her back on to the bed and pulled the covers up to her ears, tucking them in so tightly Belle could barely move. ‘Tomorrow things may look different for everyone.’
    The snow lay even thicker the next morning as there had been a fresh fall during the night, concealing any tracks made by the killer. Millie’s body was collected by the mortuary van early in the morning, and the first lot of policemen arrived soon afterwards to search her room thoroughly.
    Annie ordered Belle to stay in the kitchen. She didn’t even want her upstairs to clean, lay the fires or empty chamberpots. She was grim-faced and sharp-tongued, though Mog pointed out that this was partly because she’d been forced to get up and get