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counting the night’s takings into a leather bag.
    ‘I’ve finished cleaning the kitchen. Can I leave the bar until morning, sir?’
    ‘You’ve banked the fire down?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘The potatoes are done for tomorrow’s dinner?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘And the table laid upstairs for the lodgers’ breakfast?’
    Jane nodded wearily.
    ‘Then I suppose you can go. But mind you’re up early to square this room before my wife sees it. You can take up that stub of candle. Light it in the kitchen. Mind you blow it out as soon as you get into bed. Well stand no waste in this house.’
    Jane took the saucer which held a pool of melted wax and a thread of blackened wick. Uneasy as she was in her employer’s company, some demon made her press her diminishing luck. ‘In the workhouse I was told I’d be paid something above my board and keep. When will I get it?’
    He dropped the coins he was counting and stared at her.
    ‘I was just wondering,’ she ventured hesitantly.
    ‘Wonder no more, you’ll get a shilling a week after your board and keep, and that’s what your washing will come to.’
    ‘Washing?’
    ‘The sheets on your bed, and your dress. I don’t know what you’re used to, girl, but in this house we expect you to wash yourself and your clothes.’
    ‘Then there’ll be no wages?’
    ‘There’ll be a shilling a week, which will cover your washing. Now upstairs with you. The lodgers on early shift will expect their breakfast on the table at five, and this room will have to be cleaned and the fire and stove lit before that. You’ll need to be up, dressed and in the kitchen by four to get everything done on time.’
    Jane took a home-made newspaper roll taper from the jar on the mantelpiece. She lit the stub of candle and ascended the stairs, burning with indignation, determined to leave the first minute she could.
    The back staircase had doors that opened out on every one of the four floors, but the stairs from the third to the attic floor were half the width of the others. When Mrs Bletchett had taken her up them earlier, she had looked at the narrow margin between her employer’s hips and the wall, amusing herself with thoughts of Mrs Bletchett getting stuck half-way, just here, where the staircase bent back on itself.
    A floorboard creaked overhead and she froze, waiting for the sound to be repeated. After a full minute she breathed out. She’d spent her whole life sleeping in dormitories and was nervous of being alone, that was all. And the dosshouse was old. Old houses creaked. She had read that somewhere; probably in one of the Dickens volumes in the homes. There’d been no books, or time for reading in the workhouse. And she only had to look at the doors and rotting window-frames of this place to see that it was bound to give rise to odd noises.
    Gripping the candle firmly she climbed the last few steps. The first thing she saw as her head rose level with the floor was the light. A candle, fatter and more efficient than hers, illuminated a pair of feet next to her bed: men’s feet, encased in muddy working boots and tartan socks. Caked mud had fallen out of the treads, and lay in great dirty clumps on the scrubbed floorboards.
    ‘You’re taking your time to climb those stairs, Missy.’ It was the great brute of a man she’d tipped water over earlier.
    Shrinking back against the wall, she held the saucer with its stub of candle in front of her like a shield. ‘Get out of here this minute or I’ll scream the house down,’ she hissed.
    ‘You do, and I’ll tell everyone you invited me up here to earn yourself a shilling.’ He walked out of her room. Standing on the top step, he reached down and grabbed her wrist between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. She took a step backwards and fell. He released his hold as she clattered down the stairs, still struggling to keep a grip on the candle that scuttered out before she reached the third-floor landing.
    Cursing, he followed.