‘I’m well, apart from this cold.’ I sat down opposite her, amid the remains of the boys’ tea.

Lisa put her head on one side. ‘Who was that bloke I saw at your dad’s funeral? The one with the gammy leg. I was watching ’im – ’andsome, isn’t ’e? ’Ardly took his eyes off you all afternoon.’

‘Oh, that’s just Douglas,’ I said.

‘That’s just Douglas,’ Lisa mimicked me, her spirits returned. ‘Come on Kate – ’e’d put bonfire night in the shade the flame ’e’s got lit for you.’ She leaned towards me. ‘ ’Asn’t ’e?’ I knew Lisa took pride in her directness, her knowing that she could make me open up.

I nodded. ‘I suppose he has.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I’ve been trying not to have.’

Throughout the previous months Douglas and I had grown closer, though the progression was awkward. He apologized repeatedly for his behaviour after Daddy’s funeral, and since then had been only charming and good-natured. We had very little physical contact, and though Douglas was very tender towards me, he behaved with nothing but restraint and tact. I was the problem, confused and guilty as I was about Angus. But Douglas was very patient and he had a gift for making you confide in him. I poured out my feelings about Angus.

One day when I was telling him about our childhood he said, ‘You’d known him since you were quite small then?’

‘Oh, yes. The Harveys moved in when I was seven. I thought I’d told you?’

‘I see,’ Douglas said, as if he had suddenly got to grips with something. ‘So he was really a childhood friend?’

‘Well – yes,’ I said, puzzled. ‘We’d obviously known each other a long time.’

Since the afternoon of the funeral he had not tried to kiss me. Sometimes the way he looked at me I thought he was about to, but he held back. The only exceptions to this were times when I cried. He held me then, with a gentleness which touched me. I didn’t know whether I wanted more. I didn’t encourage it. It would have made me feel disloyal to Angus. I felt safe with Douglas, restored by his sheer physical presence near me, and knowing that he was not going to be sent away. And increasingly I knew how attractive I found him. But I resisted showing too much affection. It would have been unfair to him.

Gradually, Douglas began to tell me about his own family. Evidently he did not find them an easy subject to discuss.

‘I wanted to get a long way away from them,’ he said. We were sitting by the lake in Cannon Hill Park, wrapped in coats and scarves. ‘That’s why I came to look for a job up here. Birmingham’s not a place they’d be all that keen to visit.’

‘Not even to see you?’

‘No. My father’s in the Home Guard now. He’s a schoolmaster in civvy street. It should suit him. Used to giving orders.’