She set out along Kenilworth Street in the chilly morning with her head held high. As she approached the Browns’ house she saw that the lady across the road, Jenny Button, who ran her little bakery from her front room, was out cleaning her step. Jenny was a very corpulent lady and knelt down with a grunt, took her scrubbing brush from her pail of water and called out, ‘Morning, bab!’

‘Good morning!’ Katie called softly, not wanting her voice to carry as far as Em’s house. She kept facing away from number eighteen, her whole body tingling with dread in case the door opened and Em should come out on the way to school.

But Em did not come out. Em had first stopped coming to Girls’ Life Brigade, which they’d done together before, and lately she’d been absent from school a lot. When Katie had called for her, Em would say miserably, ‘I’m stopping at home today.’

As she passed by, out of the corner of her eye Katie saw Molly Fox come out of the entry to the yard near Jenny Button’s shop. She could tell it was Molly from her thick, blonde hair. The Foxes lived on one of the back yards, where five or six jerry-built houses would be constructed facing inwards, sharing three or four toilets at the end, a communal wash-house with a copper and a mangle for laundry and usually a stinking pile of ash and refuse. Molly’s house was not that different from the one Katie was living in, which had one room and a scullery downstairs, two small rooms on the first floor and an attic. But while the O’Neills’ house faced the street and backed onto another house, the Foxes’ was built hard up against the wall of a factory. And like the other houses in that particular yard, it was in a wretched condition.

Katie saw Molly hesitate on spotting her, and she didn’t call out to ask if she could walk with her. Molly shrank back until Katie had gone right past. Katie gave a smirk. She knew Molly was frightened of her, of her popularity and her sharp tongue. It made her feel powerful, making Molly cringe. She knew Em thought her rather unkind to Molly. Em was softer-hearted, even though she found Molly annoying as well.

Sitting in the classroom at the little double desk with its attached seat that she had used to share with Em, Katie sat in dread for the first few minutes of seeing Em come in through the door.

A couple of weeks ago, when Em had been absent a number of times, Miss Lineham had tutted and said, ‘Again! This is too much. Now – Lily Davies!’ Lily, as the new girl, had been put in the empty seat alongside Molly Fox. She had kept complaining to Katie about the smell. Molly always had a powerful reek of urine about her. ‘Lily – come and sit next to Katie O’Neill – quickly, please.’