‘I think we might as well go now,’ Cynthia whispered, anxiously. ‘But I don’t like to leave him without saying goodbye . . .’ She didn’t add just in case . . . She leaned over him and very gently kissed his forehead. ‘Bye-bye, love.’

They slipped away along the ward. At the door they turned, and Em saw her father still sleeping in the same position.

‘Bless him,’ Cynthia said, distressed.

Em took her arm and together they walked back along the echoing corridors.

It was the last time they saw Bob alive. The next day, they were told, he had had another enormous stroke in the night and had not woken up again.

They left Robbie with Edna when they went to the funeral.

‘I don’t want him to have to come,’ Em said. ‘I know he’s old enough to understand, sort of anyway, but it’s a lot for a little one.’

She knew she also needed room for her own grief, without having to explain things to him all the way through.

It was a heavy August day and Em and her sisters, all in summer dresses, walked red-eyed along the peaceful path, lined with tilting gravestones, from Witton cemetery. Sid, Em’s brother, was arm in arm with his wife Connie, while Violet and Joyce walked together, and Em and Norm walked either side of Cynthia. There were no tears from her now: she was numb and heavy with sorrow.

They saw Cynthia into one of the waiting cars and, before getting in themselves, Norm put his arm round Em’s shoulders.

‘All right, love?’ His eyes searched her face and she looked back at him, deeply. It felt as if, over those days since her father had died, she and Norm had come back together and were really seeing each other properly. She was so grateful to him.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, managing a tiny smile.

‘Oh, love.’ He held her close for a minute and she closed her eyes, face pressed against him. Her Norm. He was a good’un – she knew that really.

‘Come on,’ he said, releasing her. ‘In you get.’

She slid in beside her mother, who was looking out of the far window, up at the trees. Norm got in last, beside her. The car moved off and she felt him take her hand, and in those moments all that mattered was the warmth of his hand and the knowledge that he was there and that he loved her.

IX

MOLLY

Forty-Four

August 1948

‘Molly – how lovely to see you!’

As Ruth leaned to kiss her cheek, Molly observed that Ruth had become socially a little more confident and less awkward. She had taken to wearing her long, dark hair swept up and fastened with a big slide at the back and looked a little more sophisticated.

‘Nice to see you too,’ Molly said, feeling awkward herself, as she always did when she first met Ruth, beside whom she felt herself to be an odd mix of glamorous and rough, with her big curvy figure, eye-catching hair and down-to-earth ways. ‘Come on – I’ll show you where your billet is!’ She eyed Ruth’s little shoulder bag. ‘You haven’t brought much with you, have you?’