Angry that her friend should be so dead set against her going, Sandra demanded, ‘What the devil’s wrong with you, you miserable cow? Course he’ll accept responsibility. He’s the bleedin’ father, ain’t he?’

Molly was loath to hurt her feelings, but she was afraid for Sandra. ‘I don’t mean to make you feel bad,’ she apologised. ‘I just worry about you.’

‘Huh! You coulda fooled me!’

‘I’ve heard your side, and I’ve heard your mam’s side, and it seems to me this bloke is a real bad lot. He’s got you pregnant. He’s knocked you about. And now he’s buggered off and you’ve had to root him out the best way you can.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Happen you’d do well to let him go his own way, Sandra. Tell your mam about the bairn. She’ll do everything to help, I know she will.’

‘You don’t know her then. She’s a funny old biddy about these sort o’ things. Like as not, she’ll kick my arse out the door and never talk to me again. Besides, I want to find him. I want him to accept me and the bairn. Because, God help me, I love him, Molly. I want to be with him.’

Molly saw how desperate she was. ‘Then there’s nothing me or your mam can say to make you change your mind, is there?’

‘Not a lot, no.’ Getting out of the chair, she told Molly she would see her when she got back.

‘Take care then,’ Molly said anxiously. ‘If he gets nasty, come away.’

‘Why should he get nasty?’

‘Any man who can do what he’s done to you is capable of anything.’

For a long, emotional moment, Sandra gazed at Molly, her eyes bright with tears, and the strangest smile on her face. ‘I love him so much,’ she murmured. ‘I’d do anything for him… just like you with Alfie.’

After she’d gone, Molly wondered at the sincerity in Sandra’s voice. It wasn’t like her friend to be that serious about any man. ‘Love ’em and leave ’em’ – that was her motto up to now. And for some inexplicable reason, Molly couldn’t help but feel there was something very wrong with this one.

What kind of man would have an intimate relationship with a girl, then for no reason just take off, not leaving an address, or any clue as to where she might be able to find him?

As she set about her work again, Molly expressed her innermost fears. ‘I wish you didn’t have to chase after him, Sandra,’ she whispered. ‘In fact, it’s a pity you ever met him in the first place.’

The fat lady from the coconut shy had taken a liking to Lottie. ‘It’s nice having a pretty young thing like you about the place,’ she told her one cold, bright morning. ‘Though why you should want to throw in your lot with a bad ’un like Dave, I will never know!’

Lottie finished putting the coconuts atop the stands. ‘Because I love him,’ she answered. ‘That’s why.’