Watching her go, I felt a heaving sensation from inside me and thought for a moment I was going to be sick. But then instead, the tears came. I sat down on the grass, head on my knees, and cried and cried. Then I dried my tears alone.

*

‘Here – you gas or ’lectric?’

‘Come to read the meter, ’ave yer?’

Two scruffy boys dashed sniggering away from me down the entry into number eight court Stanley Street, their bare legs splashed with muddy water from the recent rain. Wearily I pushed my bicycle along the wet blue bricks of the entry and propped it against the wall near the yard tap, opposite the back houses. There were children playing round the gas lamp in the middle of the yard, and a woman stood mangling her washing.

She eyed me up, throwing the garment she had been about to mangle back into the maiding tub. ‘They won’t ’alf be glad to see you!’ she called out to me, disappearing into one of the houses.

It was September, and early days in my job as a Health Visitor. It had not been a good morning. I’d already found one baby with chronic diarrhoea. Her mother was feeding her condensed milk from an old Daddy’s Sauce bottle with a couple of inches of decayed rubber tubing. Another woman had called me an ‘interfering cow’ when I suggested she might spoil her baby when feeding it whenever it demanded and carrying it round all over the place. A feed every four hours, we were taught, and not too much cuddling and stimulation. ‘I didn’t ask you to come forcing your ideas on me, did I?’ the woman said aggressively. The Welfare. Snoopers. That’s how we were seen, though not many came out with it as bluntly as that. The majority listened politely and probably ignored a large percentage of what I said. Sometimes I looked back with longing for the hospital and its controlled environment.

Still, Mrs Callaghan, the young mother I had come to visit, was gentle enough and had a thriving week-old baby. I was just gathering up my bag with the leaflets on breastfeeding and brushing down my blue serge skirt when a voice behind me shrieked, ‘Thank God you’re ’ere – come on, quick, or we’ll be too late!’

A young woman in a worn grey dress, with sandy-coloured hair, was hopping agitatedly from foot to foot, her pasty face taut with anxiety. ‘Hurry up – Margaret’s up there on ’er own with ’er.’

‘You mean . . .? But I’m not the midwife.’

‘I know you’re not the flaming midwife. We can’t find ’er anywhere. The babby’s come on fast and the doctor’s not ’ere yet neither.’

She made as if to take hold of my arm, but I said, ‘All right, I’m coming,’ and we hurried across the wet yard. As we passed through the front door, though it was much like any of the other houses, I had a strong sense of having been here before. In the gloomy downstairs room an elderly man was sitting smoking, stretched out in an armchair in a stained singlet and trousers with the fly unbuttoned. At the tinny fender sat a young boy intent on a comic, and two other tiny children cruised round what remained of the floor space. In those few seconds passing through the room, I took in that the dark shape taking up most of the centre of the room was a coffin.