‘Go on then.’ He leans into her arm, nudging her with his elbow. ‘Say it.’

Still fixed on the photo, she leans back against his body. ‘I love it! I take back everything I said before – this is much better than you, any day.’

William’s present is a bike, waiting for him in the communal shed next to the allotments. His old one is still there, ridiculously small. He goes for a ride round the park at the end of the street while Evelyn starts lunch. He can only just reach the ground, so he’s a little nervous, but thinks by Easter he’ll have grown into it.

For the first few days at home William had woken at six, when Matron would have marched through the dorms with her bell. There is a particular pleasure simply lying there not having to get up, gazing at his bedroom, at the spindly bookshelf, the yellow and red spines of The Boys’ Book of Heroes, The Hardy Boys, The Famous Five and two bibles, one black and one red. William’s eyes rest for longest on the cowboys and Indians rampaging across his curtains. He was just nine when the exciting new fabric had replaced the yellow calico he’d known since birth. A giant, hanging story book, with the rangy sheriff striding out of a hotel, and to the left, two Red Indians looking up a mountain, one with leather tassels running the whole length of his outstretched arm, and the other balancing a long spear on his shoulder. Above them, a friendly-looking cowboy with a gun stands next to a carriage with white, billowy sides. The final image is of three cowboys, galloping towards William with pistols.

He has not forgotten the excitement of these curtains. They signalled a turning point, when his mum stopped looking sad all the time. He was still woken every night by her sobbing, which was so awful he worried that she might choke and die. But at least in the mornings she’d smile and do things like buy him cowboy and Indian curtains.

‘It’s called Hiiiigh Noooon!’ she said with a twangy drawl, pulling them across his window for the first time. They enjoyed westerns at the cinema, had already seen Gary Cooper in the film from which the images had come. The galloping cowboys on the curtains were probably heading down the mountain to kill the Indians, but it all looked friendly and jolly.