On one of her afternoons off she walked along the front at Clacton. It was quite a nice day, hazy but warm, the sea calm and flat, but Molly’s spirits would not even lift with the weather. Her head ached slightly, and she felt heavy in herself, ambling along in the shapeless afternoon. She made her way along to where there were fewer people about, found a bench looking out to sea and sat down to have a smoke. All the stark facts of her life began to crowd in, reported in her head like newspaper headlines: Molly Fox, child of a Birmingham back yard, mother a drunkard, father . . . ? Well, that was a hard one. Father a broken casualty of war. Real father? Her grandfather – a filthy old man who had molested her and spawned her with his own daughter. Brothers? One vanished, one a vile crook, hanged for murder. The one chance of real love, Tony, dead from a delayed-action bomb in London . . .

Stinky little Molly Fox . . . All her childhood she had been the outsider. The poorest, the smelly one, with problems – she realized now – stemming from her grandfather’s attentions, so that she could not always hold her water. Thinking back on her past self, she was filled with an anguished fury. What a family! Round and round in her head it all went, until she could stand no more. She pushed herself up and, walking as if propelled by a will stronger than her own, went up a side street and found the nearest pub.

‘I’ll have a whisky,’ she said abruptly.

The landlord gave her a look, but served her anyway.

She sat in a dark corner while a row of men nursed pints along the bar. She saw them eyeing her and turned away, looking as unfriendly as she could. Men always paid her attention: her figure, her blonde hair. It was as if they couldn’t help themselves, had some picture in their minds, ready-made, that was really nothing to do with her.

Molly drank quickly, going to the bar for another, turning away from their comments. The drink reached down into her, warm and numbing. It was a long time since she had drunk. In the army she had made a fresh start. She was going to make something of herself, break away. The very last thing she was going to do was turn out like Iris. But now . . .

Not wanting to go back to the bar for a third drink, she went to another pub, then another. By the time she weaved her way back to The Laurels she couldn’t walk straight. She climbed up to her room and flung herself on the bed. Thoughts battered her, despite the drink. Tony, and Len, with whom she had had a desperate love affair after Tony’s death – Len who had been promised to someone else, and she had ruined it, all of it . . . And she had lain with them and coupled with them: Len and others. And she had taken no care, yet there had been no child – not ever.