And that’s what did happen a few years later. The Ugly Men’s Association had been going since the war, and had done all manner of good, keeping an eye on those in need and giving a helping hand when they could, no questions asked. But after Uglie Land closed, the Ugly Men went quiet too, although there was still the need for help like that in those years, more than ever before. Maybe that was it, maybe the need was too great, I don’t know.

We saw a lot of That Jack Laing after that, and Clementina found herself going to stranger-places. The Saturday she came home and told me she’d been to the horseracing, d’ye mind! we stared at each other, scandalised.

What was it like? I asked in awe. What kind of people there?

Just people, she said shrugging. But with money they can live without! She sniffed. Horses have more sense than those people!

It was a wee while before Clementina realised Jack Laing was an SP bookie, but by then it was too late. I’d grown to like having him around, the children thought he was moon and stars, and as for Clementina, well, she’d fallen hard. He asked her to marry him and she couldn’t help but say yes, even though it shocked her to think what her mother, Lord rest her, would say.

She won’t know, I told her.

But Clementina rolled her eyes darkly at the sky. Ach, she’ll know, she will, she’ll be stampin’ her feet in Heaven.

An’ what matter if she does!

It was a light in the darkness all around, and didn’t she deserve the brightest, my Clementina?

Wasn’t any question of Clementina and That Jack Laing moving to a cottage of their own in the Depression. He’d been living at a boarding house for single men. I knew the day would come when they would leave, but it wouldn’t be now. So that little house in Martha Street took in one person more, and we all squeezed around each other as best we could. As it turned out, we were not so crowded for long because Hal soon left for the wheatlands, looking for work clearing or fencing, and That Jack Laing was away for weeks at a time in the country, although never was I sure what it was he did there. So once again things changed, and they stayed the same too.

When I look back on that time, I try to shut out the Depression, the way the world was then. I like to remember Clementina’s face on the day she became Clementina Slater Ratter Laing, a hat of everlastings on her bluntly cut hair. Clementina, my dearest friend, my quinie, as she always and ever was to me. It was the last happy thing that happened for a long, long time.