‘Look!’ Ann was waving a copy of the Mail. ‘I’m not trying to get rid of you – not as such, of course. But there’s summat here might be just the thing.’

A service wife in Handsworth was advertising for a lodger-cum-companion while her husband was away. Well-behaved infants were welcome, not more than two, sharing care of the children.

Katie read it and looked up at Ann, her eyes full of hope.

‘The only thing is,’ Ann said, concerned. ‘How will you pay the rent – it does say it’s neg . . . negotiable.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Katie said. ‘I can manage – until I can get back to work again.’ She had Simon’s money. Anger and hurt swelled in her, as it did every time she thought of him, as well as a defiant determination to survive without him, whatever happened. To show him she didn’t need him – even if he didn’t know or care! Anyway, it was the least he could do: put a roof over their heads.

That was how she came to be living with Maudie Grant in Holly Road. Maudie and her husband John were schoolteachers, though John, a history teacher, had decided to ‘do his bit’ and had joined the navy in 1940. Maudie’s parents, who lived nearby in Handsworth Wood, had helped and supported her with the little ones and she had had a lodger for a time, but she had moved on.

‘As my two have got older, I find it even more of a handful in some ways,’ Maudie told Katie on her first visit. ‘I thought it might be fun to have someone else in the house with children – but then, you see, I love babies. Oh, I’d so like another one, but of course with John not being here . . .’

Maudie was a curvaceous, lively, scatty young woman who hardly ever stopped talking. She had straight brown hair, yanked back into a wayward pony-tail, and an artless way of dressing – frumpy almost, Katie thought, taking in Maudie’s calf-length brown skirt and cream blouse with three-quarter length sleeves, and a button missing so that the blouse gaped, giving a glimpse of her white brassiere. Yet the overall effect of Maudie was not of a frump, because there was something so individual about her shapely, restless figure that gave her her own style. And she was very pretty, with a scattering of freckles across her nose and wide grey eyes. Her children – Jenny, six, and Peter, four – were blond and angelic-looking.

Katie, wanting to hide nothing and spare herself any disappointment, carried Michael along with her. In any case, she didn’t like being separated from him and didn’t want to put Mrs Miller to the trouble of looking after him. He lay sleepily in her arms, his cheeks pink and firm.

‘Oh, now he’s adorable!’ Maudie said softly, looking down at him. ‘What lovely colouring: those dark lashes. He’s ever so like you, isn’t he? But so little – when on earth did you have him?’