All the next day Katie slept, on and off, feeding and holding the baby in between. The house had gone quiet, except for Mrs Miller moving about and panting up the stairs to see how she was, and whether she wanted another cup of tea or something to eat. Katie started to feel bad that she was causing such a fuss. She’d handed Mrs Miller her ration book of course, but apart from that she was too exhausted to do anything but lie there. She felt tearful and vulnerable to painful thoughts. Her mother’s rejection of her played endlessly in her mind. Then sometimes she let herself imagine Simon coming into the room, seeing his son and being delighted and tender towards them both, and for a few moments it made her weep with longing. It was no good. She’d wipe her eyes fiercely. She had to harden herself, finding her bitter anger so as not to dissolve into despair. Never, ever again, she vowed, would she put her trust in a man.

One morning, instead of Simon, she found herself thinking about Em, and dwelling on all that had happened all those years ago. She wondered how Em was, whether the Browns still lived in the same street. There had been a sweet perfection about their childhood friendship – and she had wrecked it. But she knew that it was as much her mother’s fault, forcing on Katie her mean, superior ways, and again she burned with hurt and anger towards Vera. She’s no mother of mine . . . She longed to see Em – for that freckly, smiling face that she remembered to come into the room now and see her, and for things to be all right. She told herself not to be so silly. Em would have grown up and changed completely now, and she certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see her, of all people! But it’s funny, she found herself thinking tearfully, we were only babies really, but I still think of her as the best friend I’ve ever had.

‘You’ll soon pick up,’ Mrs Miller told her on one of her visits to the bedroom, finding Katie wet-cheeked once again. ‘There’s you, all on yer own – t’ain’t right, that. But don’t you worry. We’ll see yer all right.’

‘You’re so kind,’ Katie kept saying, though the tears kept on coming. She couldn’t seem to stop them.

As soon as Ann came in from work that evening she was up the stairs.

‘Where is he? Ooh, let me have a hold. I’ve been looking forward to this all day!’

Katie was sitting up in bed with the baby in her arms. Since the end of school there’d been a trail of smudgy-faced, amiable Miller children up and down to ‘’ave a look at the babby’. As she held him, he gazed up at Katie with a blurred, confused expression. She found it hard to let go of him when she handed him to Ann. In that one day she had been amazed to find that she had a fierce, tender attachment to him.