There was a time, in the days when Paddy did work regularly, when every now and then, on a week with good overtime, Peggy would call into Cindy’s to have her hair done into a beehive and on those days little Paddy was so proud of his ma because she was almost like the other mothers. She would also go to the bingo with Maura, and nothing made little Paddy happier in the whole world than seeing his mother, smiling and excited, rushing down the yard to meet Maura and knock on for Shelagh or Deirdre. Oh, he loved her so much!

Peggy’s shoulders drooped and the desolate sight of her, of the empty tin of Get Set hair spray on the mantelshelf standing next to the empty bottle of red nail varnish, a testament to better days, pained his heart, as did the worry etched on her brow and the sadness in her eyes. He knew something of how she felt, because he had lost his best friend too. He and Harry Doherty had been like brothers but he never said anything of this to Peggy; he knew she had enough on her plate. His head fell and he gazed down at the dirty, unwashed quarry tiled floor, covered in crumbs and half of the wasteland brought in on shoes. He was right, then. The rent hadn’t been paid and that concerned him because he had seen Tommy Doherty storm up the stairs to his da’s bedroom so often and heard him shout, ‘Get out of that bed, you lazy bastard! Because if you don’t, the rent won’t be paid and the dock board will have the bailiffs round and all of you out on the street with every measly thing you own!’

Tommy would never have said that to his da if it weren’t true and little Paddy had seen it happen, had walked past a family on the Dock Road, the ma crying, Eric the milkman coming to their rescue, loading their belongings onto the back of his milk float, Ena bringing the mam a glass of whiskey to steady her nerves. Maura had told him later that Sister Evangelista had sent them to a refuge on Upper Parliament Street to keep them dry until the Liverpool Corporation found them a house, but that the house would be miles away, out at Speke. Maura had bought them a bag of scones at Cousin’s on the parade and asked Harry and little Paddy to drop them round to the ma.

‘You take them, lads,’ she had said, ‘it will save her dignity that way. Better if I don’t do it. God love them, they’ll end up in Speke, now, miles from everywhere and everyone.’