SPOILERS!!!
Ethel is teh underhouse parlourmaid and she tends to be quite flirtatious. She is seeing Billy Snow, a shop assistant at the grocer's, but she is also flirting with Alan Butcher, who is also a shop assistant. When Billy asks her to marry him, she says that she can't marry him when there is nothing romantic he has done for her. Then Billy enlists and tells her that they should marry before he goes away, but she turns him down and even refuses to be called his fiancée.
Ethel hasn't gone to see her mum for a while, and with the talk of walk her conscience nags at her, and she decides to go and see her mother, Annie, on her day off. We learn that Ethel never knew her father because he died when she was very young. She had two siblings, who were much older than she was: Edie, a sister, and her brother Cyril. Edie ran away with a tinker years ago, and Ethel remembers how fond she was of Cyril, and how he was like a father to her. It was Cyril, who told her to go into service when he was dying, and she has him to thank.
When Ethel visits her mother, she finds her in bed. Annie is not very loving, and she expresses her disapproval of Ethel visiting. Like the last time she visited, Annie keeps saying that Ethel is not her daughter. And this time she explains that Ethel's mother is Edie when she fell pregnant at the age of 15, but to avoid scandal Annie told everyone that Ethel was hers, but she always felt that Ethel was a burden and never liked her. So she tells Ethel to go and never return. Ethel knows that Annie is dying, and this will be the last time she will see her.
I find Ethel's character unlikeable but at the same time interesting. Her aspiration is to find a husband who can give her a steady life and a good house.
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