‘Put it this way,’ she said, still not looking round at her friend. ‘If I was going to have a babby, it would’ve happened by now.’

Ruth was silent for a while. Then, quietly, she just said, ‘I see.’

‘I haven’t been a good girl. You know I haven’t.’

‘Well, I didn’t know for sure . . .’

‘So now you do. I could’ve had Tony’s baby.’ Tony, the one man she had truly loved. ‘But it never happened. Then the others. There’s summat wrong, Ruth, it doesn’t happen for me. Not that I’ve wanted it to – it’s the last thing I’ve needed. But I’ve taken that many risks, usually when I’d had too much to drink, and I never thought about it. But I started thinking about it a while ago. I put two and two together and – I knew.’

‘Surely there are tests . . . ?’

Molly shook her head. ‘There’s no point. I just know that’s how it is.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruth began.

‘No. I’m not. Best not pass on my family’s seed, that’s my way of looking at it.’ Her voice was bitter now. Had her grandfather ruined her, somehow? All those infections she’d had? She would never know. It was just the way things were.

She turned her head now. ‘What about you?’

‘Oh – me! I don’t know. I can’t really imagine it at all. I think I’m too much of a bluestocking for most men.’

Molly smiled. ‘We can be old maids together then.’

‘That’s about it, I think!’

‘Talking of old maids – have you seen the Gorgon?’

‘No, but Win has. I think they meet for a coffee every month or two. She’s a rather lonely soul, I think. Win says she seems ever so pleased to see her when they meet up – still smokes like a chimney. There’s another one for our club, I reckon!’

Molly laughed, though she felt sad for Phoebe Morrison. She had never seemed a very happy person.

‘Not Win, though,’ Ruth said. ‘I’m sure she’ll marry someone very decent and sensible, and they’ll live in a nice little house and have two children called Janet and John!’

‘Yes!’ Molly laughed. ‘She will – like Honor!’ Honor, another of the ATS they had done basic training with, had married someone very rich and was now leading a graceful country life near Oxford.

‘Oh, I think for Honor it’s more of a mansion!’ Ruth laughed.

‘She was all right though, she was,’ Molly said. ‘Hey – fancy a cuppa?’

‘Now you mention it,’ Ruth said, ‘there’s nothing I’d like more.’

Forty-Five

That October day when Molly had stumbled into the public toilets at Clacton and saw in the mirror her shambling, dishevelled reflection, another horrifying premonition of ending up like her mother, she promised herself that she was never going to drink again. The way she had sunk so low, waking half naked on the beach, unable to remember much about the night before, had frightened her badly.