Bridie and her and me run on to the street to see the spectacle of it being towed down the hill. The caravan brushes against the greenery and snags on a low branch on one of the big sycamores and then it’s parked. It’s a mint-green Clubman that’s seen better days but for Serena it’s paradise. She’s never seen pink frilly curtains before, didn’t know that kitchens could be so uncluttered, had no idea that benches could double up as beds. She holds up Blue Ted and Bosco against the back window and John kisses them both through the panes to make her scream with laughter. The track of his lips is still on the glass when I go to drag her away. I am left out of all their games.

We were over four months in the caravan in all; Bridie was on one bunk, Serena and me on the other. John slept in his brass bed in the milk house which made Serena giddy with joy. She wanted to sleep outside with him but he wouldn’t let her because of the rats. To her, he said, little girls can’t sleep outside in case their hair goes straight. Well! He created a monster: after fruit loaf and milky tea, straight hair was everything she wanted. I often had to go and lift her out of his bed when she was dead to the world. He kissed her dangling feet by way of goodnight and I wiped them on my side.

One night, he must have been so tired, working on the farm and building the house, that he fell asleep and when I went to collect her, they were wrapped around each other, Chicken Licken and her falling sky lying open and the yellow glow of the Tilley lamp making the whole scene look like a life I might have wanted at some stage. I should have let her alone, but I couldn’t sleep without the warm smell of her beside me, so I slid her out and tiptoed back to Bridie, taking care not to look at the shape of John Johns’s red lips when he slept.

I’m not yours, I said to his dreaming face once more for my own sanity, and you’re not mine. Those red lips were sneaking past my defences, had made a few appearances in my secret dreams where they got all mixed up with nudey-rudey photos and the thought of him putting his mouth on the sophisticated Catherine. Now he was stuck back here building a better house for my daughter and for his mother and I would get to live in it too if I didn’t annoy him. There was no denying that he was decent in many ways. I had to keep an eye on my anger. It was in danger of petering out if I didn’t keep it fuelled.