Worse even than the cruel words, the hurt they painted on Em’s face, was the glimmer of enjoyment that Katie knew she’d had in saying them. In those moments she’d felt high above Em. We’re better than you . . . And now she was sorry and she hated herself for it.

In a thick voice, she said, ‘It ain’t Em’s fault, ar it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ her mother said ominously.

‘It’s not,’ she corrected. ‘It’s not Em’s fault.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Vera O’Neill agreed. ‘Not directly. But what’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. She’ll be tarred with the same brush in the end. You keep away from them, do you hear? Now – I need to finish this before the light goes. As you know, I have to work very hard to keep us. Now off you go.’ And she turned, bending her elegant head back over her work table.

Freed at last, Katie hurried down to the little room she shared with her mother and flung herself face down on her bed.

‘See,’ she muttered, as if Em was in front of her. ‘Mom says your mom’s a loony – that’s why I had to do it. A mad, stinking loony, so there!’ And then she burst into tears.

Kenilworth Street, in an old district just to the northeast of the centre of Birmingham, had only been their home for just over a year. Before that Katie had been to St Joseph’s Roman Catholic School, near where they had lived off Thimble Mill Lane, about a mile away. So far as Katie was concerned, things had been happy enough there. She’d made friends and done well. But her mother had suddenly announced that they were moving, and before the school year was even finished she had been snatched away and landed up in Kenilworth Road, in a new class at an ordinary council school where there were no crucifixes or statues.

‘Your uncle has found us a more suitable house,’ her mother told her. ‘We need to leave immediately.’

It was true that the house had an attic room, unlike the last one they’d been living in, but otherwise it didn’t seem much better. To Vera’s shame, it still backed onto a house that faced into a yard, which meant walking round and sharing the communal toilets. Vera, who hadn’t seen the house before they moved, was furious.

‘I told you – I want a house with its own privy!’ she ranted at Uncle Patrick. ‘How could you? You know how I feel about having to associate in this horribly intimate way!’

‘I’m sorry, Vera,’ Patrick said, in his usual gentle, sagging way. ‘But it is a better house than before – there’s a room for you to work in, and the rent’s not much more, either.’

‘Well, I suppose we’ll just have to put up with it – for now,’ Vera snapped.

Katie, then aged seven, didn’t question anything. Her mother was not someone to argue with, and it just seemed the way things were. When she asked about seeing her friends from St Joseph’s, since they weren’t an impossible distance away, Vera said sharply, ‘There’s no need to keep up with those people. You’ll soon make new friends. And pray to God we shan’t be here long in any case.’