Tommy had put the paper on his lap. ‘You look proper grown-up, Paddy,’ he had said. ‘Best not to play footie in them, though, they won’t last five minutes if you do.’

‘I won’t, never, I promise, Tommy,’ he said and Maura had felt her heart swell for the little boy she had delivered herself in the front bedroom next door.

But it wasn’t just little Paddy – she had bought clothes for the entire Nolan family.

‘What’s the use of us having money if we can’t rig everyone out?’ she had protested when Peggy made a half-hearted objection. As it happened, Tommy had been only half right. Peggy had indeed pawned the shoes and clothes Maura had bought for Peggy, but she hadn’t touched anything of the children’s, and when big Paddy suggested it, she had felt her blood boil.

‘I’ll pawn the blankets on the bed, the statue of the Holy Mother, even my mother’s clock! I’d pawn you, you useless lump of shite, before I take the shoes off their feet. It’s a shame I couldn’t bear, Paddy, and I warn you: if I have to pawn the kids’ shoes, don’t you even bother coming back home.’

Now, before he put on his clothes, little Paddy flung himself flat on the bedroom floor, shimmied on his belly under the bed and opened the lid of the cardboard box he kept hidden there. Two small black eyes stared up at him. ‘Max,’ he whispered to the black rat, who obligingly pushed the rest of the lid off and, looked intently at little Paddy, as though waiting for his next words. Scamp shuffled flat on his belly and lay next to him. The dog and the rat were the axis of little Paddy’s life now that his best friend in all the world, Harry Doherty, had gone.

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back soon with some pobs and then you can come to school with me in me bag.’

Max, as if understanding every word, obediently hopped back down into his box and little Paddy replaced the lid. ‘Back soon,’ he whispered as he and Scamp wriggled back out from under the bed and headed down to bring in the milk.

*

Half an hour later the street came alive as the dockers’ klaxon rang out, calling the men down to the docks and the calls went up from one back gate to the next. The marching men stopped at Peggy’s. ‘Oi, big man, are you coming out or what?’ shouted Jerry who lived across the road in number 42.

Peggy grabbed the spoon from Paddy’s hand as he was about to scrape the last of the milk-soaked, sugar-coated stale bread from the side of the dish and, opening the back door, threw his coat at him and pushed him out.