‘Oh, the poor man!’ Edna Arbuckle had cried, appearing on the step to find out what was amiss. She was bundled up in a huge tweed coat, a mustard-coloured hat like a large pie sitting on top of her head and a pair of little boots with zips up the front. ‘I suppose he’s all on his own now!’

‘Well, we’ll do our best to see that he doesn’t just hibernate,’ Sybil said drily.

For several months afterwards Mrs Arbuckle had pursued Mr Gudgeon with what he appeared to find a horrific amount of interest – not this time on Susan’s behalf, but for herself.

‘He could move in with us, you know,’ she told Sybil, who relayed the offer to Katie with twinkling glee. ‘I know how to look after a man, even though my Harold has been on the other side for a good many years now.’

The only flaw in her plan was that poor Mr Gudgeon fled every time she appeared, and eventually she gave up on him, declaring him too old and set in his ways.

‘He’d only take advantage,’ she confided to Sybil. ‘You know the type – ask them in for a cup of tea and the next minute they’ve installed themselves, slippers and all.’

Mr Gudgeon continued to live in the big room at the front on his own, but because of its size it was also a cold room. The warmest place in the house was Sybil’s dining room, where she kept a fire going. In these days of extremity she made it clear that they were welcome to sit there whenever they liked, to keep warm. Coal supplies had to be eked out, the wood was soon going down and it was a case of making do, rugs over their knees, wrapped in layers and layers of clothes while the house was muffled in snow and spiky with icicles, the ground hard and slippery as glass. Mr Gudgeon usually disappeared upstairs first, and Geoff Jenkins – who seemed to have taken the hint quite quickly that Katie was not interested in him – stayed to chat for a while, before leaving Katie to talk to Sybil.

One night in late February they had settled as usual, chairs pulled in close to the fire. Sybil treated herself to a nip of malt, Katie refusing as ever.

‘One day,’ Katie sighed, cradling a cup of tea between her hands, ‘we’ll be able to have a proper bath!’

Sybil laughed. ‘Surprising what comes to seem a luxury, isn’t it? We’re all right though, really. Think of all those poor people still laid off at Longbridge, not getting paid. And some of the houses – so inadequate. Goodness knows how some people are managing. The wind’s bitter out there tonight.’ She grimaced. ‘I used to be a midwife. I’ve seen some sights in my time.’

She paused to take a sip of her whisky.

‘My father used to say, after we came home from Africa, “We take too much for granted!” He was really quite vicarish at times. “We live a life of comfort, and we don’t even know it.” There was always a bit of finger-wagging that went with that.’