After a quick dinner of bread with pickled beetroot and a wafer of cheese, Em was still in a bad mood.

‘Come on, Robbie,’ she sighed. ‘We’ll go and see Nanna and Granddad.’

‘Oh!’ he protested, grimacing. ‘I wanna go and play out with Don and Eric!’

‘Well, you’re not going with them today,’ Em said firmly. She didn’t like the way Robbie was hanging about with a lot of the older boys these days. He was mad to be with them, scouring the bomb pecks for shrapnel and other treasures, playing games of shooting Germans.

As they walked along in the muggy afternoon, Em glanced a few times at her son’s shorn head. She wasn’t sure she liked the haircut. It was very short and made him look too grown-up, and somehow harder in the face.

‘Your hair’ll grow back soon,’ she said, rubbing a hand over it. Robbie shrugged her off impatiently.

He was in a world of his own, pulling on her hand, trying to get her to walk faster and muttering to himself. He was in some war game now as well, she could tell. Suddenly he caught sight of a skinny, red-haired boy across the street.

‘Eh – Tommy!’ he yelled.

‘All right, Robbie!’ the lad, about ten, bawled back.

‘Shoosh, Robbie,’ Em scolded. ‘Don’t shout across the road like that. It’s rude.’

Robbie shrugged. He was starting to walk with a swagger, she saw with a pang. He wasn’t like her little boy any more, soft and biddable. These days he was off out, the first chance he got, and came home filthy with cuts and grazes on his legs, full of the big boys and all their adventures. It had hit her hard when he first went to school, even though it was to Cromwell Street where she had been herself. She sometimes felt he’d outgrown her, even though he was only six – that she was a bore who spoiled his fun. It was only at night when he was half asleep, or if he was poorly, that he felt like her sweet little boy again, the boy who needed her comfort.

Here I am, she thought resentfully, with the two of them, husband and son – and neither of them take the blindest bit of notice of me. Norm had taken a while to settle back to life at home after the army. Over these past years his restlessness had died down a bit, but he was not the man who had gone away, devoted to her and wanting nothing but to be with her. He was off and out with the lads far more. Sometimes she looked back with nostalgia to the days of the war, when she had missed him and longed wholeheartedly for him to come home. Now he was here, everything felt so flat. She found herself longing for a daughter who might give her more company.

As they crossed the cut, Em pulled Robbie to a stop and looked down into the water.