‘You know what? You are a big softie, Eric,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘Mind you, I’m not much better. Sometimes I think I only bake cakes every other day to make sure I can give some to little Paddy to hand them out to the kids. He loves my shortbreads, and God love him, they are so easy to make. No idea why his mother can’t do it.

‘I know Kathleen and Alice fed all the kids this Sunday; Kathleen said she had made too much and Alice had peeled too many spuds but they never did; they just knew those kids were on jam and bread all day because big Paddy, the lazy sod, barely worked last week.’ She glanced up the road. ‘Oh dear, Peggy will fall right out of that bedroom window if she leans any further forward to catch your eye, Eric! What are you going to do?’

Eric shook his head. If there was one thing he hated more in his life than anything else, it was having to say no to a woman asking him for milk he knew she couldn’t pay for. ‘What can I do? Our Gladys wants to get out on the round on Friday nights and do the collecting with me. She counts every pint out and every penny in since Peggy didn’t pay up last time.’

Maggie pulled hard on her ciggie and then glanced up the road. ‘If you do give her some, put it on my bill this week. It’s her lazy git of a husband that’s at fault, not her. If that man can get out of work, he will. Kathleen said yesterday, when she read my tea leaves, that Jerry was going to step in or those kids will be living on jam buttys forever more. Kathleen told me that one morning their Jerry and Tommy stormed up the stairs, dragged Paddy from his steaming pit and marched him down the steps. Now Jerry is going to try and do it on his own, before those kids get rickets – though God love them, the youngest looks like he has it already. Give her four steri, Eric, and I’ll pay it; that way, your Gladys will never know.’

He fought the urge to reach out and fold her into his arms. Maggie Trott, kind, dependable, lonely. A bit like himself, even though he had Gladys at home. Maggie flicked her ash onto the pavement and under her breath whispered to Eric, ‘Don’t look now, we really are being watched and it’s not just Peggy Nolan…’

*

Annie O’Prey never lifted the front room nets until Maggie Trott took out her cigarette lighter. That way, she and Eric never saw her as she watched their every exchange across the cobbled road. ‘One day, his Gladys will catch him at that,’ she said to her son, Callum, who had walked into the room behind her.