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had stopped wearing her cap, and started tying her hair back with a blue ribbon. She was sitting where her mother used to sit, on a stand-chair drawn up to the table, with the work-basket to hand beside her, sewing a patch on one of the lads’ trousers. A bobbin of black cotton fell on to the floor and when she bent forward to pick it up he saw the hollow between her breasts.
    Jack averted his eyes. It would be boys next. Boys from the mills or the pit, or even soldiers from the barracks, coming round with eager eyes, wanting to take her for walks. Wanting to fondle her. He felt the heat rise in him.
    ‘Dad?’ It took him a second to realise she was speaking. Her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.
    ‘Do you think you could put me money up this week, so I can buy some material to make a dress?’ Putting the patching aside she clasped her hands together. ‘I know you sold the sewing machine, but I could make it by hand. I’d do it plain, no fancy bits or anything. There’s a social on down at the Mission Hall, with dancing and a bit of supper. The tickets are only sixpence.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘I can’t go in an old skin, an’ I’m growing too big for me blouses. I can’t move the buttons any more.’
    Jack’s face set hard. He could hardly bear to look at her gazing at him with tears in her eyes and that red wavy hair slipping its ribbon, falling down over one shoulder, reminding him … reminding him … With a fierce thrust of a foot he set the chair rocking.
    ‘I’ve never had a dress, not since me mother died.’ She was whingeing now, like a child who must have its way. ‘I have to go. Can’t you see?’
    ‘
Have
to?’
    Annie’s quick temper rose to meet her father’s angry stare. ‘You can’t shut me away inside for ever! I’m seventeen years old! The lads are my
brothers
, not my sons. I’m not their mother, though God knows I’m trying to be.’ She went to stand beside him. ‘There’ll be time enough for me to settle down when I get married, but first I want a bit of fun. I want to dance and laugh, I want to go to the social. Laurie said you’d let me if I asked you properly.’
    Jack’s hands were clenched tight on the arms of the rocker. He stared up at her and saw the way the emotion inside her was heaving her breasts up and down. In a minute she’d be going off into one of her old tantrums.
    His hand shot out and gripped her arm. ‘You know well there’s no money for fancy clothes.’ His hard fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arm. ‘But even if there was, you’re not going to any dance. Not at seventeen, eighteen, or even nineteen. Not while I’m here to see you don’t!’
    Annie only took in what he said about the money. When he stood up, still holding on to her, she saw that his eyes were on a level with her own. And it came to her in that very moment that if she kept on growing, the day would soon come when she was taller than her father. Taller than any of her brothers – she knew that too and somehow the knowing of it gave her courage.
    ‘If you spent less on drink you’d have more money to give to
me
.’
    Had
she
said that? Annie clapped a hand to her mouth, but the expression in his eyes goaded her on to say even worse. He hated her. It was there in his eyes, filling them, narrowing them to menacing slits.
    ‘I bet if Mrs Greenhalgh from the bottom house asked you for money for a dress you’d cough up,’ she said in frantic desperation.
    When he hit her, rocking her head back, Annie accepted that she had certainly asked for it this time. When he unfastened the buckle of his belt she twisted away.
    ‘No! Not that, our Dad. Please, no!’
    The shame and humiliation were already there in her cry, but she’d gone too far. She had spoken to her father as an equal, and there was no way he was going to stand for that.
    Laurie Yates had missed two cages through taking his time back from the coal face. The work appalled him, and every back-breaking day the