She adjusted the collar of her black coat, bought hastily the day before from one of the second-hand stalls at the Old Market in the East End. The coat she’d worn for years and years was a dark bottle green but still not funereal enough. She knew eyebrows would have been raised if she had worn that. Her felt hat was a dark charcoal colour so that had been near enough. She was ready and she knew the undertakers would be here any minute in their black carriage but still she did not move. She wasn’t crying, she felt there were no more tears left. This day was the culmination of years of niggling worry about her bairn, her Joe, and now he was dead. She had thought he had escaped the presentiment which had been with her for so long when Jake had taken him on at the farm but she should have known you can’t cheat fate. And now the waiting was over.The pain inside her caused her to bend over slightly although it was not a physical thing. No more would she see his smiling face, and he had been a smiler, had Joe.
