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was always Milly’s favourite time of the day. Ellen Colman had been struggling to darn one of the old man’s jackets; her weak eyes meant she wasn’t a good needlewoman.
    ‘Here, Mum, I’ll do it,’ Milly offered. Taking the needle carefully from her mother’s hand, she decided to broach her plan. ‘What if I just go hopping for a week?’
    Her mother began shaking her head.
    ‘Mum, just listen a minute. Southwell’s will let me have a week off unpaid, and what if I promise Dad I can make more picking than I’ll get in wages?’
    ‘Twelve bob? You’ll have to pick ten hours a day to do that!’
    ‘No, I won’t, don’t forget what I do all day! My fingers are twice as quick as yours. I’ll do it easily!’ Her mother must know it was true; everything Milly did was swift and deft. Often when they sat sewing in the evening she would catch Mrs Colman watching her. ‘It’s a wonder you don’t stab yourself, the speed you go at!’ her mother would say.
    ‘So, Mum, will you ask him?’
    Mrs Colman shifted in her seat and Milly felt a blush rising to her cheeks, feeling cowardly for asking her mother to do it. But if she suggested it herself, he would never listen.
    Her mother considered for a long moment, while Milly’s blush deepened. She was praying silently her mother would agree.
    ‘I’m not promising nothing, so don’t get your hopes up. But all right, I’ll ask him.’
    Milly dropped the darning, and flung her arms round her mother, squeezing her tightly. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said, kissing her on the cheek.
    ‘That’s all right, darlin’, I know how you love it down hopping.’
    Sitting her rangy body on her mother’s lap, she hooked her long legs over the arm of the chair. Milly rested her head against her mother’s as she had when she was small.
    ‘Get off me now, you’re squashing me half to death, yer great lump.’ Her mother shoved her off, but not before planting a kiss on her cheek.
    Milly suffered a whole week of gnawing anxiety, while her mother waited to pick her moment. It wasn’t until the hopping box was full to bursting and the day for the family’s departure to Kent had arrived that Mrs Colman found the courage to speak to the old man. It was Saturday afternoon, pay day, when her father felt rich, with his suit out of the pawnshop and a pocket full of change for his bet and beer. They were all sitting round the kitchen table after their dinner of mutton stew, one of the old man’s favourites. Milly gave her mother a meaningful look and a small nod towards her father. The old man didn’t approve of talking at the dinner table and propped a little bamboo cane by his plate, to keep his children in order. She and Amy had long ago learned to keep their thoughts to themselves at family meals. Elsie’s knuckles, however, were permanently bruised, as a sharp rap from the cane regularly failed to halt her unruly thoughts from tumbling out. Milly’s mother took a deep breath, and her cough broke the silence.
    ‘Me and the kids’ll be going tonight then.’
    The old man grunted, ‘Well, make sure you’re quiet, I don’t want you waking me up at two in the morning.’
    Milly thought it highly unlikely that anything would wake him after his Saturday night pot full, and anyway, the family knew the drill so well, it was like a military operation. They’d be out of bed just after midnight, last-minute items packed into the hopping box and the girls bundled up in layers of clothing. They would creep out of the house, in time to catch the four o’clock ‘hopping special’ train from London Bridge. The old man never usually stirred.
    ‘I was thinking it’d be good if Milly could come for a week, though, it would do me a turn, helping with the kids,’ her mother said lightly.
    Clever Mum , Milly thought, don’t for an instant let him know how much I want to go. Her father said nothing. His thick, leather-tanned fingers rolled the cane back and forth across the