Eric began his milk money collection at six o’clock every Friday evening, but when it came to the local shops and businesses, he called on a Wednesday, straight after he had finished his morning round on his way back to the dairy. His last stop was always at Cindy’s, the hairdresser. There was no fancy name painted on the hoarding above her window, it was simply Cindy’s and if it hadn’t been for the sink with the rubber spray hose attached to the taps, two pink overhead dryers, the swivel chair perched in front of the large mirror and the spider plants along the windowsill next to a display of light-faded Woman’s Own and Woman’s Weekly magazines, no one would have known what service Cindy offered inside her shop which was on the end of a row of prefabricated units, hurriedly erected after the war.

Nelson’s parade boasted greengrocer’s, butcher’s, fishmonger’s, a hardware store, Simpson’s the tobacconist and paper shop, the chippy, Cousin’s the baker, the betting shop and, finally, the hairdresser. Cindy was the only woman who worked on the parade to wear make-up and sheer stockings every day, had a hemline which appeared to be creeping upwards at an alarming rate, and she never went to church. Cindy wasn’t married, by choice and there wasn’t a woman on the four streets who didn’t know that Cindy was taking contraception. Yet, despite the fact that she was often whispered about over kitchen-table gatherings, not one of them had withdrawn their custom as a result. This was due, in large part, to the fact that Cindy had covered herself in a veneer of respectability and credibility, provided by good-looking Reg, her long-suffering boyfriend, the well-respected local garage owner and mechanic who, it was said, popped the question every Saturday night, half an hour after the official Anchor closing time and five minutes before he hopped into her bed.

Reg was the closest the community had to a successful self-made man, evidenced by the fact that he was never slow to put his hand into his pocket in the pub. People were in awe of the hours he worked, the cash he flashed, and the number of young men he employed who called him ‘the big boss man,’ and, despite all his obvious attributes, his absolute failure to persuade Cindy to walk up the aisle astounded everyone.

‘She’s strong-willed, that one, but surely not strong enough to resist the likes of Reg? Who could do that? Tell you what, he can slip between my sheets any day,’ Peggy would say in the presence of Maura and, for all her holiness and jangling of rosary beads, Maura laughed as loud as all the others.