‘Oh, at last,’ she sobbed. ‘A halfway decent home – after all this time.’

Katie was excited by the move. She had a room of her own now, up in the attic.

‘It’s no good putting your uncle up there,’ Vera said.

She didn’t need to say more. Sometimes Patrick paced the floor for parts of the night. It would have driven them to distraction trying to sleep underneath.

Very soon after they moved in, Patrick disappeared for several days. Vera seemed calm about it.

‘He’ll be back,’ she said. ‘He likes it here really – he’ll be able to go to Mass in Evelyn Road. He just doesn’t take very well to things changing. It sets him off. Like when he came back from Africa.’ That was her explanation for things. Africa. She always blamed it on things outside him, like the weather, or Africa. She was never, ever able to acknowledge that Patrick himself had anything wrong with him.

Over the next weeks Vera O’Neill set to work with her Singer, making pretty curtains to give them privacy and turning the bare house into a home. Gradually she saved up for some pieces of furniture – not new, but in reasonable condition. She found a table and chairs for the back room and a comfortable couch for the front, with a curved wooden frame and upholstered in deep-blue velvet. She bought some rugs to go by each of the fires.

Moving house also meant a new school for Katie. She was glad in a way. Cromwell Street School was all right, but ever since what had happened with Em all those months ago, they had been avoiding each other and had scarcely spoken a word, even when Em came back to school. Katie had wanted to explain – it wasn’t my fault, it was Mother – but when she saw Em playing with that Molly Fox, of all people, and looking through Katie as if she didn’t exist, it had hurt Katie’s pride. She had expected Em to be less self-sufficient and strong, to beg her to be friends. She made do with Lily Davies and a few others, but it had never been the same. Even though she would be starting at Clifton Road School when the term had already begun, she looked forward to a new start. And though it was hard at first, some of the girls were friendly and she soon settled in.

Five

Summer 1937

‘Disgraceful – absolutely disgraceful.’ Katie heard her mother’s voice as she slipped in from school and the sunny afternoon. ‘And she’s so common. I don’t know why they’ve allowed it. Is that you, Katie?’

‘Yes,’ she called, putting her worn old satchel down in the front room.

‘There’s tea in the pot.’

She knew what she would find, going through to the back room. It was Monday, washday, the day Vera didn’t work at Lewis’s. Once the morning toil of a copper full of water and the mangle was over, often Vera got together with Enid Thomas – usually in Sparkhill, because although Enid had to go to the trouble of making the journey once or twice a month, she liked coming.