‘I think it might be quite nice to live here,’ Mo said cautiously, ‘but what about our dad? And what about Auntie Glenys? We wants her to live with us, doesn’t we, Jimmy?’

Glenys was about to reply that she did not wish to be a burden when old Mr Griffiths spoke, his voice heavily accented and his breathing wheezy. ‘Jumping ahead of yourselves you are,’ he commented. He turned to Glenys. ‘No disrespect, miss, but we’ve yet to hear how you come to be travelling with our grandchildren. Sam here told us Jimmy and Maureen had left Liverpool with a woman he’d never heard of. So before we make any more plans for the future I think we must hear your story. Sit yourselves down – you too, Sam – and we’ll start as we mean to go on, please. Whoever is speaking must be allowed to do so without interruptions. Questions can come at the end.’

His wife laughed but patted the couch, indicating that the children should sit beside her. ‘I think we should start with the children, and Miss Glenys can pick up the story at the time she entered it in real life,’ she said. ‘Off you go, Jimmy and Mo!’

‘That’s a poem,’ Mo said approvingly. Glenys had sat down beside her and smiled at the remark.

‘Very true. So far as I can make out, the story really begins with Mo herself. As it was told to me she was cleaning sprouts so that Mrs Huxtable might sell them to folk for their Christmas dinner . . .’

She looked enquiringly at Mo, who nodded vigorously. ‘And I saw Cyril Huxtable opening a parcel . . .’

Glenys sighed. ‘Start at the very beginning,’ she said. ‘One morning a few days before Christmas, when you were doing the sprouts . . .’

The story unfolded far more coherently than one would have expected. Everyone was amused by the tying together of Cyril’s bootlaces, but annoyed that the Huxtables could think Mo would steal anything from anyone, ‘let alone a piece of what I dare say was probably costume jewellery’, Sam had surmised. And having heard how the other man had abused his trust and ill treated his children, Sam said he would have cheered had Cyril broken his neck. Glenys’s side of the story followed, and she made no secret of the fact that she thought Sam a cruel and uncaring father to leave his children in the care of people whose bad reputation should have been known to him. Having heard Glenys’s explanation, one would have thought that Sam would have looked upon her with a kindlier eye, but this did not seem to be the case. He resented her criticism of the time he had allowed to elapse before coming back to Liverpool, and she resented it when he said, frankly, that had she not run away with them he would have been reunited with his children weeks earlier. She pointed out sharply that she was not psychic, could not possibly have known that he would return. ‘I thought you a most unnatural parent,’ she told him coldly. ‘And who could blame me? You did not seem to care what happened to Jimmy and Mo, whereas I, being on the spot, could understand their desperation to get away from Liverpool and the Huxtables.’ Sam began to justify himself, but his father-in-law shook his head chidingly.