We’d just settled ourselves on the bus when John Johns sat down in the front seat so he could chat to Petey McGovern, the busman. He had been away in London working with our Liam on the building sites; they’d shared digs in Cricklewood then in Kilburn for a while but now they were both back. I was glad for Mrs Johns; she’d been in tears over a letter he’d written to say the woman he had fallen in love with had disappeared. This woman had been mentioned in several letters: the amazing Catherine who was all he had ever dreamt of, now he understood what it meant to have a soulmate.

Now, though, Catherine was never to be mentioned again; he did not want to hear her name. He would be home, he said, he’d stay home on that condition. It was just like him to insist on carrying the misery all alone, sobbed Mrs Johns. He’d always been wary of letting anyone get close and the very first time he’d let his guard down, he’d been gutted.

I was desperate to read that letter, to see written evidence of soulmates and true love, but she kept it balled up in her fist. What happened with this Catherine? What kind of a woman could steal John Johns’s heart and then give it back? She’d have been a model or something, an actress maybe, someone with golden skin and pure straight golden hair? There’s no cure for a broken heart, Mary, no cure, Mrs Johns said as she blows her nose and pockets the precious letter in her apron where I can never lay my hands on it.

Will my heart break if Joe Loughrey tires of me and my million excuses? I have to be home, no, that’s not another bruise, I don’t want your father to say anything to my father, I can’t get out again this week, don’t mark me. I was a litany of don’ts! He might think I’m not worth taking to America? He might not want to tangle with Sadie Rattigan for the rest of his life?

I look over at him and he’s just a boy, a boy already flicking through one of his jotters to see what homework he has that night. I’m putting a lot of weight on those little shoulders but they’re the only shoulders I have.