‘I want to be a waitress when I grow up,’ she said passionately.

Vera glanced at her with distaste, then away, trying to attract one of the waitresses’ attention. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Her voice was acid and forbidding. Katie shrank inside. Mother was back, the usual Mother who could turn on you in a second.

But she did not feel crushed for long because one of these heavenly beings came to take their order, smiling prettily as they requested tea and a cake. The choice of cake was very difficult, but she picked a delicious pink sponge with cream in the middle and cherries on the top. Vera had a scone with jam and a tiny pot of whipped cream, and showed Katie how to eat daintily with a little cake fork, and they each wiped their mouths on the starched napkins.

‘I shan’t need any dinner,’ Katie said, scraping the last trace of cream from her plate with a sigh of satisfaction. She looked across the table at her mother and saw with a new shock how she looked as if she was in the right place, in a way she never did in their poor little house.

‘Mom?’ Vera didn’t correct her this time for not saying ‘Mother’. ‘Are we rich now?’

A bitter expression passed across her mother’s face for a second. ‘No, dear. Not rich. But things will get better. We shan’t have to live in that slummy place for much longer.’

After Christmas they moved house. Katie could feel her mother’s grim relief as they left Kenilworth Street behind. Patrick hired a van to take their belongings and got a friend to help him.

‘Are we going too?’ Katie asked. ‘Can I ride on top?’

‘No, you certainly can’t,’ Vera said sharply. ‘There’s not the room, and I’m not having us perched up with our chattels for all the neighbourhood to see. I’ll take you on the tram. Your uncle will go ahead of us.

The only sad part was saying goodbye to Mrs Thomas, but both women promised that they would remain friends and visit each other. Mrs Thomas kissed Katie on the cheek and said, ‘Bye-bye, love. I’m hoping we’ll see something of you. Don’t forget your Auntie Enid, will you?’

She stood on the step waving her hankie when Katie, with tears in her eyes, waved back until they couldn’t see Mrs Thomas in her pinny any more.

They moved to a nice little house in Sparkhill, not far from the park with its lovely green space and bandstand, where Vera said there would be music on warmer days. The house had a back and a front room, three bedrooms including an attic and, best of all, a scullery at the back with a copper to heat up for laundry, and a strip of garden with their own private privy behind the house.

As they walked along from the tram stop on the Stratford Road, the van was still outside. The street was cleaner and much nicer than the one they had left, and when Vera stepped inside the new place where their belongings, including her sewing machine, were being unloaded, she put her face in her hands and burst into tears.