Gladys could sense his resistance, had known it was there for the past three months. Their evenings had followed an established pattern. They attended the weekly dance in the church hall, then he walked Gladys home and pecked her on the cheek and said thank you. Her behaviour on that fateful evening was a wild deviation away from the norm. Unbeknown to him, she had received strict advice from her mother.

‘Get him to marry you,’ her mam had said. ‘That way, if he doesn’t come back, you will at least get a payout and maybe a pension until someone else takes you, but it will be a struggle, Gladys. You don’t have our Pauline’s looks.’

Her mam’s words were ringing in her ears as she felt Eric resisting. Without another word, she raised her thigh, pressed her heel into the wall, placed her hand over his own and pushed hard against him. He gulped hard.

‘Marry me, Eric, before you leave and then I’ll be waiting when you come home on leave. I can make you the happiest man on earth before you go and then you know there will be something to return for.’

She’d kissed his lips, hard, pushed her tongue into his mouth and pressed it against his own and Eric, confused, felt the picture of Maggie slip from his mind, to be replaced by a pounding, relentless urgency in his loins. The inside of her thigh was warm and soft, surprisingly so in comparison to the rough, calloused skin on her hands. He didn’t answer her question, he just said her name, ‘Gladys’, with a hint of reproach, as she placed his hands within easy reach of the unknown. He could feel the heat of her, scorching his fingertips, coaxing them into life.

‘Marry me,’ she’d whispered in his ear, ‘marry me,’ and, as she pushed herself harder against him, as his fingers slipped inside her, he knew he was beaten. He was seventeen, had never even fully kissed a girl. She had hurled him rather than pushed him over the edge. He plummeted down into a world beyond reason and he suddenly wanted more. It was too late for Eric whose passions had got the better of him. It was time for Gladys to be the startled one as he had grasped her hand and pressed it into him. He moved up and down against her, pushing his own hand deeper and deeper with the same rhythm as his loins against her hand, and now he was the one who didn’t want to stop and, as the blissful relief came, he shouted out, far louder than he had meant to, ‘Marry me, Gladys!’ Aware only of the blood pounding in his ears and his shortness of breath, he said again, ‘Marry me,’ only slightly quieter this time.