Halfway down her street Doris met John Prosser, Tom Clapham, Rees Griffiths and Danny Tanner carrying Jack Carlick between them. Jack’s blackened face was screwed up with pain, and he moaned softly. Doris pressed herself against the wall. She had taught so many of these boys and so many of their names were listed on the church walls, for explosions and fires down the mine were an annual occurrence. When the men moved on, she found the back of her coat smudged with soot from the wall.

A group of small children, clutching their farthings, were clustered around Ernesco Melardi’s ice-cream cart. They should have been tucked up in bed, it was almost six, and Doris tut-tutted at them hanging around playing tic-tac. They saw her and waved, and Doris gave a sharp nod of her head. She could hear the children sniggering and whispering behind her but she didn’t turn back. ‘Droopy-Drawers Doris’ was their favourite name for her this week.

It was the sound of a child’s screeching voice that made Doris catch her breath. It was sweeping over her again, and she only just managed to open her front door before her head began to thud with one of the blinding headaches that beset her so often. Doris was back in Clydach Vale again, her head thudding, her ears filled with the sound of the rushing water. She clung to the edge of the polished kitchen table. Twelve years ago, and yet it was as if it were happening at that very moment…

Again she heard the children’s voices, the screaming hooter as the warning went out. The school had been flooded with water from an abandoned coal level. Doris had waded through the slime, searching, calling out the children’s names. Three tiny bodies had been found in the playground, and then little Ned Jones was found curled up like a baby in the corner.