‘You don’t remember each other, do you?’ Daddy said. ‘Katie, this is Lisa Turnbull, now she’s married. She was Lisa Blakeley before. D’you not recall taking her little brother Sid home with us for a few days once?’

Sid Blakeley, the grimy baby I had ridden home with in the car that day. And Lisa, his skinny sister whose father had ‘buggered off’.

‘I knew there was something I recognized as soon as I walked into the house,’ I said. ‘Now I look at you I can see . . .’ She was much more robust-looking now, and her hair had grown thicker, but I could remember her in the pale grey eyes and high cheekbones.

‘You’ve changed a bit, too,’ she said, her eyes leaving the baby’s face for a second. She smiled again. ‘Your dad’s been ever so good to us over the years.’

There was a sudden bustling around us as Margaret arrived, panting from the stairs and making a great to-do with cups of tea for us all, milky and loaded with what must have been most of their sugar ration for the week.

‘You’re out of stera so I got Agnes to borrow us some,’ she remarked. ‘And Lisa, you ought to apologize for the coffin downstairs. It ain’t nice with people coming in.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Lisa looked at my father. ‘Auntie Glad. Dr Williamson came out to ’er, more’s the pity. Funeral’s tomorrow.’

‘No need to apologize at all,’ Daddy said. ‘Now, may I give the child a quick look over before you bath her? And then I must be on my way.’

I watched him handle the tiny baby, her limbs still clenched tight, feeling her soft fontanelle, checking her hips and eyes.

‘I’ve got a scale with me today,’ I remembered, pulling the spring balance out of my bag.

The baby squalled resentfully as we popped her into the weighing sack and she hung dangling as if from a stork’s bill.

‘Six pounds four,’ I said to Lisa. ‘She’s a good weight. And you’re going to carry on breastfeeding?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes – can’t be doing with bottles and all that.’

‘Much the best thing.’ I closed up my bag. ‘Much less chance of her picking up germs.’

‘The Health Visitor approves,’ Daddy joked.

‘What’re you going to call ’er then?’ Sandy had evidently been bursting to ask.

‘Daisy,’ Lisa said. ‘After my mom.’

My father and I said our goodbyes. ‘I’ll see you in a few days after the midwife’s been in,’ I told her.

Downstairs, Sid was sitting looking blankly out of the window, absently tapping one foot on the coffin lid.

‘Stop that.’ The older man cuffed him. ‘’Ave a bit of respect.’ Neither of them seemed to have taken in the arrival of Daisy upstairs.

Daddy stood with me in the shadowy light outside. The sun had sunk behind the houses. Lines of washing were draped across the court, blocking the light even further and giving off a faint whiff of Hudson’s soap. More pungently I could smell the drains.