That’s why she went down immediately, as the committee began serving the tea. She marched across the floor, making a beeline for him, quick as she could, before the Dinny Hughes Big Band dared announce a Lady’s Choice. A Lady’s Choice would have ruined her. She stood before the Vet and stuck out her hand and introduced herself.

No trimmings required.

‘How do you do? I’m Birdie Waters. Are you the new vet?’

He confessed that he was indeed the new man in town.

‘I see you can dance,’ says she. Not a compliment, mind you. No. An evaluation. A statement of measure.

‘The neck of her.’ She heard them. But let them call her what they like. Birdie knew that none of them was a match for her.

That was it. The Vet took her hand in his hand, and placed the palm of his right hand between her shoulder blades, and off they went. She could glide across that floor with such ease that he realized she was a treasure from the word go. The rest of them didn’t have a look in, once she got him on his feet for the first time.

And in the years that followed there was something else he treasured more than her little feet, and that was her honesty. She spoke her mind. She told him all her secrets, and she demanded his.

As she walked across the floor of the town hall that night, and stuck her hand out, some of the snooty bitches could be heard bemoaning the recently abandoned social practice of class segregation. Half-crown dances used to be reserved strictly for the well-heeled, and shilling hops for the children of the poor.

There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, they muttered, when teddy boys didn’t get in toilet windows, and girls from the terraces would have more self-respect than to march up to a member of the professional classes and force him to dance.

But there was no sign on Alex Delaney’s face that he had been forced into anything. In fact he looked the picture of contentment as he glided around, spinning her, turning her, in ever more extravagant flourishes and twirls as the evening progressed. Every sign on his face that the woman he had been waiting for had just entered his life.

7

SHE CAN’T BEAR looking at that Oxo box. Why is it sitting there? And who took it out? Birdie needs to sleep. She needs to sleep. She has a long day to get through. The darkest of all days. So she leaves the kitchen and holds the wall as she moves down the hall, and then up the stairs. Slowly now. One step at a time. One hand on the banister. One hand on the wall. That’s it. That’s good. And back to her room again. Pull back the bedspread and the blankets for the umpteenth time. Ease herself down onto the pillow. Must sleep. Must be ready for the morning. Christ help her to sleep.