In times past it would all have been left for her to tidy away: boots polished and put in the hall cupboard in a neat row, bags emptied of wet and muddy clothes and taken through to the kitchen to dry in front of the range while the contents were sorted and scrubbed clean. Not any longer. Times had definitely changed and Ann would have her guts for garters if she so much as moved a bootlace.

Isobel returned to the kitchen and ran her hand along the back of the chair and across Rab’s shoulders. He was sitting at the table in his working trousers and braces, a collarless shirt, and socks that needed attention from a darning needle. He had moved into the house at the end of September, and over the last week, ever since Ann and Keith had waved goodbye and headed off to the bus station, things had started to change.

They had enjoyed having the place to themselves; laughing and chatting with no one to hear. He had told her about the accident which had happened more than twenty years before in a house on Library Terrace, although he couldn’t be sure which one. He had been thirteen and not big enough to be labouring on many of the building sites even though he’d been out of school for a whole year. His uncle had known that money was tight and found him a few hours’ work but afterwards he had never forgiven himself for what happened. Rab explained how a dod of lime plaster had fallen from the plasterer’s hawk and landed square on his face as he looked upwards from below. The hawk had been full and heavy and it had taken a minute for the tradesman to get down the ladder safely and scoop him up. All the while he had been screaming his head off, and then he had been held under a tap, dunked into a bucket of water and got soaking wet and half frozen in the cold. He told her how the man whose house it was going to be had handed over his good coat to stop him from freezing half to death; a coat which had been stored safely in the wardrobe with mothballs stowed in the pockets until he had been old enough to wear it. He had used it for years until it had eventually become threadbare.

Isobel had stroked his face and kissed the burn scars and the blind eye and said how pleased she was that he had come back to this street and not been frightened away. Neither of them cared about the age gap; six years was such a small thing to bother about when so many had lost everyone who mattered. For three nights now, they had slept side by side in her narrow bed in the room above the scullery, and she wanted him never to leave.