Maudie was interested and sympathetic. Gradually Katie found herself talking about Vera. She had been tempted to tell Maudie that her mother was dead too, but she owed it to her to be more truthful than that. And eventually – because it soon became obvious that there were no letters arriving from her husband, and Maudie kept worrying for her – Katie could not keep up the pretence of pining for an absent spouse. She told Maudie about Simon Collinge. Maudie was shocked, but then furious on Katie’s behalf.

‘You mean he paid you off – just like that?’

Katie nodded, her face burning. ‘I felt . . .’ It was so strange, so wonderful to pour all this out for the first time! ‘Well, I felt cheap – awful. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the money, but . . .’

‘Of course you should!’ Maudie insisted indignantly. ‘If he was just going to abandon you, instead of doing the decent thing. What a complete cad!’

‘Yes,’ Katie agreed. Even though it hurt, she could see Simon Collinge for what he was: a spoilt, shallow young man who had used her for what he could get and then cast her aside. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent without it.’

‘And he’s not interested in seeing his own son?’

Katie shook her head miserably, looking down to hide the sudden tears.

‘Well, you poor girl. We women have to stand up for ourselves, you know – we didn’t get the vote by giving in to them. All I can say is, we’ll stick together here, at least till the war ends. We’ll have to see after that, won’t we?’

Katie nodded gratefully, wiping her eyes. ‘Yes – thank you very much.’

Thirty-Two

The two years had flown by. Their household had been a very female one, with some of Maudie’s friends visiting. Katie’s old friend Ann Miller came very occasionally to see how she was getting along, and she went to see the family in Balsall Heath sometimes too. They were always delighted to see her and Michael. In its way it had been a happy time, and she had put a lot of her bitterness over Simon Collinge behind her. He had become irrelevant.

But in the summer of 1945, after peace had been declared and celebrated in Europe, Katie realized that although the men would not be home for some time yet, she had better get out of the typing pool and look for a better-paid job. She had soon found her new post at Rowan and Johnson, Solicitors, and was pleased at the thought of working in town for a change. In celebration she went to a draper’s in Handsworth – never Lewis’s, in case she ran into her mother – and bought a length of vivid jade-green cloth, off the ration, to make herself a suit. It had been that first morning, reporting for work, as she had walked across Cathedral Square in high spirits, that a young woman in a pink frock – so busy gazing up at the cathedral that she was not looking where she was going – had collided with her. The past echoed at her immediately. It was Emma Brown, from Kenilworth Street.