Four

Shortly before Christmas when Katie was nine, something happened that changed their lives. Vera O’Neill got a job in the millinery department of Lewis’s Department Store. She was employed to help with the Christmas rush, but when she had been there only a few days, she was asked if she would like to take on a permanent job, working Tuesday to Saturday. With her knowledge of sewing and her old-fashioned, ladylike ways, she was well equipped to work there and she jumped at the chance. It seemed to be exactly what she needed to restore her lost confidence.

‘I’ll be able to take on some of my tailoring still,’ she said, flushed in the face as she told Patrick and Katie that evening. ‘And you’re old enough for me to take on a job outside the house now, Katie. You’ll have to be very grown-up and responsible.’ There was a note of warning in her voice as she paced up and down the room, as if to say: Don’t think I shan’t be watching your every move, even if I’m not here! ‘Now, I have a feeling we’re on the way up. Everything’s going to change.’

Patrick was having one of his calm days. He smiled, looking up from his paper and said, ‘That’s good, Vera. That’s very good now.’

The transformation in her mother was startling. Vera seemed younger, lighter in herself. Katie had not known, until then, what life had sucked out of her. In celebration, after school had broken up, she took Katie out for a treat, dressed in her Sunday best, a dark-red dress. They had been in Lewis’s before, of course, but then it had always been a case of: look, but don’t touch.

‘I’ll take you in to see Father Christmas,’ Vera said. She was excited herself. Katie had never before seen her in such an indulgent mood. ‘And while we’re at it, it’s high time you had your hair cut.’

Lewis’s, with its grand building in Corporation Street, was always exciting to go into, as if you were entering the world of wealth and glamour. When you walked in, there were those lovely smells, of soap and scent wafting from the perfume and make-up department on the ground floor. Then all those stairs up, up the high building, and the floors full of clothes and gloves and shoes, and soft, lacy undergarments and silk stockings – things that they could never afford, but that it was achingly fun to admire.

‘Can we go and see the pets?’ Katie asked, clutching her mother’s hand as they climbed up the stairs to see Father Christmas. ‘Please?’ The very fact that she felt she could ask showed that this was a day unlike any other.

Vera hesitated, as if calculating in her head, then the most wholehearted smile Katie had seen in a very long time spread across her face.

‘All right then – just this once.’

It was a day Katie would never forget. First of all they queued to get into Santa’s grotto, where she stared amazed at Santa’s long, white beard as he lifted her onto his lap.