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up.’
    ‘You better not have another one of those spiders or cockroaches in there,’ Tilly warned, ‘or I’ll tan your hide, as big as you are.’
    ‘I haven’t, I promise.’ He opened his hand, revealing the horseshoe pin. ‘Reckon this is yours,’ he said brightly.
    ‘Ducky, for the life of me, what you gone’n’ done?’ His mind flicked back to the house in Carlton with
    its booty of other people’s belongings. Instinctively, a hand moved to the watch still hidden in his pocket.
    ‘Better you don’t ask.’
    She shook her head. ‘Time you stopped your tomfoolery.’
    ‘Serves Payne right,’ he said, in his own defence.
    ‘It’s not as if he’s been fair.’
    ‘Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you don’t pay your rent, a landlord has the right to chuck you out. People like Henry Payne may be criminals in our eyes, but the law is on their side and that’s all that counts.’
    ‘You can’t let people walk all over you,’ Lonnie said. ‘Payne should let you be, not threaten to come in with the bailiffs and take all your belongings.’
    ‘What’s done is done,’ Tilly said sadly, ‘it’s too late to change anything.’
    ‘What d’ya mean?’
    Lonnie soon realised. She was to be evicted from Cumberland Place. Payne had flatly refused to let her stay, sending word he didn’t run a charity. Wouldn’t even face her in person. The sum of her possessions collected over twenty years – the plump well-worn armchair and twist-legged table, the brass bed, the side dresser dusted down with loving care and waxed to a shine, plates and spoons and English teacups, the copper her dearly departed had installed in the rear yard with firewood stacked ready to boil enough water for a weekly sponge all over – were to disappear with the bailiffs. By the end of the week Auntie Tilly would have nothing left to call her own.
    ‘But you know ducky, life knocks unexpectedly at your front door. Alfred, my widower cousin down in Blackburn, the one with the parcel of land and a well-fitted house close by the lake – I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye – but I’ve agreed to help out with domestic duties in exchange for a bed.’
    ‘You’re not serious? You can’t go maryanning.’ In Lonnie’s view, poor Auntie Tilly was far too long in the tooth to scrub floors and do the laundry for an ungrateful relative. She deserved better than scouring until she became bedridden, or even worse, dropped dead.
    It was a crying shame that all the women Lonnie knew would be well worn out before their time. Why, even at sixteen, Daisy was already squinting something shocking from too many hours doing close needle and point work. Pearl, with her hard- handled body and she only sixteen as well. His own mam, scrubbing for the toffs for a living. All these hard workers had something in common. They didn’t know an easy life, but they wouldn’t settle for charity, either.
    ‘I’ve lived here far too long to ever think of leaving willingly,’ continued Tilly. ‘Over the years everyone around here has been so kind. No one ever made me afraid before. But it’s a cruel world when a man can blacken us good folks’ character by saying we’re all bludgers who waste money and won’t pay our rent. What does he know about hardship?’
    Lonnie had never seen Tilly in such a sorrowful state before. She was plumb true when she spoke about Little Lon, no matter what outsiders believed. He knew how he would feel being forced out. Why, he was even named after the place, dropped there by his mam and proud of it, too, although in true Irish spirit his grandad always reckoned it was in honour of Londonderry and wouldn’t hear any different. If Payne thought Lonnie was going to stand by and let this happen, the man had better think twice.
    Already with an inkling of a plan, he patted Tilly’s shoulder consolingly. ‘You can’t keep your house, but we’ll make sure we pack away your belongings before those scoundrels have