She supposes she shouldn't, that perhaps it's an awful thing to feel a connection based on, but when Katie admits her first husband was the same, Demelza feels a surge of companionship, of comfort. It's awful that anyone has suffered at the hands of someone who claims to love them, but there's comfort in knowing they're not alone.

Others have suffered, too. Others have lost bits of themselves as well.

"I'm that sorry," she says and she means it in the way only someone else who's seen the same sort of anger possibly can. "My father tried to come and take me home. He brought men from our village and they attacked Ross. Said all sorts of awful things about him havin' taken in a child, that they knew what he really wanted me for, but he never once did nothin' untoward. He never touched me, not until I was older and I... I went to him first. I loved him so much. But that day when my father and the miners came, he fought to keep me at his home where I'd be safe and not because of anything I was givin' him, just because it was right. People like him make all the difference when sometimes you might think... maybe you did somethin' to make 'em that way."