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screamed out, ‘I did nothing but talk!’
    Ma slapped me across the chops so hard that I staggered to one side. I heard Sam suck in a breath but he didn’t stir to help me. Tom came across the street so fast that I could hear the slops in the gutter splash up around his ankles. We all of us turned to watch him puff up.
    ‘Madam, I’ll swear it, I didn’t lay a finger on her,’ he said.
    ‘You may touch her all you like, for four shillings,’ Ma said, over my head, ‘but none of my girls visits with young fellows just to talk.’
    Tom fumbled in his pocket.
    ‘I’ll give you two shillings now, to talk to her,’ he said, ‘and so you shan’t beat her. I’d give you four, if I had it.’
    Ma took the coins from his outstretched hand and peered at them in the half-light. Then she simply stepped back and closed the door, leaving Tom, Sam and me standing on the step.
    Sam shook his head, though what he meant by it I didn’t know. I couldn’t speak, even to thank Tom. We all three of us stood there like noddies.
    At last I said, ‘I’ll give you two shillings back,’ though I didn’t know how I’d manage it.
    ‘You gave me those two,’ Tom said, ‘I won, betting on you tonight.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said.
    He was standing on the street, just looking at me. His eyes were very dark; I couldn’t see what look they held.
    At last Sam said, ‘Ain’t you going to kiss the lad a thank you?’
    ‘She needn’t do that,’ Tom said, so quick it was near all one word.
    I was more fuddled in that moment than I’d been my life long.
    ‘Goodnight, then,’ I said at last, and I went inside, just so that I could stop thinking about it.
    Before I closed the door I heard Sam laugh and I saw Tom’s dark shape turn away, his head lowered as it always was.
    I couldn’t stop thinking about it after all. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.
    When next I fought I looked for Tom the moment I took the ring. When I saw him sitting on the rail I couldn’t help but smile at him. He smiled back and I found myself so flustered it took a hard fib upon the cheek from my opponent to bring me round and have me straight again.
    When I came down from the ring that day I took the ale from his hands and some of the culls called out, ‘Oh, she favours you now, lad!’ and the like.
    Tom and I blushed together.
    After that, it was accepted in The Hatchet that Tom would hand my ale to me and not a word more was said about it. When Mr Dryer called out for anyone willing to be my second and bottle-holder, Tom would sometimes raise his hand and I’d feel my belly shift and not be sure if I hoped he’d be chosen or passed over. I knew that if he were too near to me I’d be too flustered to fight well. Mr Dryer never did turn his finger to beckon Tom, so I can’t say how well my nerves would’ve fared. Mr Dryer seemed never to see Tom’s raised hand at all. When I came out of the ring, mind, whether victorious or defeated, before long there he was at my side, looking at me again. I couldn’t believe he’d choose to do so, and yet I must believe it.
    One day he brought me feathers, bright yellow and blue, won from a sailor just off a ship. I kept them in an old cigar box, which I’d hidden up the chimney breast. In a house as loose as ours it was hard to keep hold of anything as being truly your own, and I guarded that box as though it were filled with jewels – though it held nothing much besides a few broken beads I’d had from one miss or another, and a silver button from a gent’s coat that Ma never knew I found. Now I pushed all that to the side and laid the feathers in careful as anything, and stroked them till they were flat. No one had ever given me any kind of present before.
    Tom walked with me only a very little way now; I couldn’t let Ma catch him again. Every time we parted I felt my belly swoop, unsure if he’d kiss me at last. He never did try. He always stood watching me, his hands in his pockets, till I