Robbie brightened up no end at the sight of a pineapple chunk. Em stood up as Norm disappeared out to the back.

‘I s’pose you’re off fishing this afternoon?’

Norm turned, half shamefaced. ‘For a bit. Me and Wal. Looks a good day for it.’

Most Saturdays now he was either out fishing with a mate or two or, in the winter season, playing football with the lads. There was a police team. It was something new that the army had given to him – that he had more need of male company. And, Em thought bitterly, to be away from her, from having to bring up a child. It felt a long time since they’d done anything together, just the two of them.

‘What’re you going to do?’ he asked.

Fat lot you care, she thought. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll be looking after Robbie – just for a change,’ she said sarcastically. Turning away, to go and fetch aspirin and a plaster, she said. ‘I’ll go to our mom’s.’

‘All right then,’ Norm said. As if trying to make things better, he followed her and pecked her on the side of the head, adding, ‘It’s nice for them to see him. See you later, love.’ And off he went with his rod and sandwiches.

Em’s mother-in-law, Edna Stapleton, was a kindly woman who had always made them welcome in her house. She had had a long and stable marriage, her husband Bill employed at Metro-Cammell ever since his working life had begun, and, having had only two sons, they had been reasonably comfortably off. Their terraced house was neat and always immaculate.

The housing shortage was so extreme, the queues for council properties to rent so long, that it was a good job she was so even-tempered, as they were all stuck with each other for the moment. Em was ashamed of the fact that, however kind her mother-in-law was, Edna Stapleton was also rather interfering and got royally on her nerves.

Edna meant well. She was cheerful, energetic and fiercely house-proud, forever scrubbing at something and always convinced she knew best.

‘Oh, I don’t think you ought to be feeding him again yet, ought you?’ she’d say when Robbie was a baby. ‘You don’t want to spoil him.’

‘You don’t want’ was one of Edna’s phrases. ‘You don’t want to put that on there,’ when Em put a little vase of flowers in her own and Norm’s bedroom. ‘It’ll make a stain.’ ‘You don’t want to put him in that – it’s still damp . . .’ Or ‘You want to make sure you turn that mattress . . .’ Em was sick to the back teeth of being told what she did and didn’t want. She knew really that her in-laws were far better than many, but she longed to live in her own house, where she could decide what she wanted for herself. Where her married life could start properly, instead of being stuck with Norm’s parents.