Now, she slipped from the bed and dressed swiftly, watching Daniel, wondering if she should wake him. She hovered over him for a moment, studied the contours of his mouth, considered a kiss, but decided against it. Daniel awake would only delay her departure and she’d see him again in just a few hours anyway; Steve was picking them all up from the bus station at one o’clock, then they were crossing the Pennines to the Mayflower Club. So instead, she tiptoed out of his bedroom, holding her shoes in one hand and their two mugs of last night’s tea, stone cold, undrunk, in the other. Down the stairs, cautious and light as a cat. At the foot of the stairs she placed her shoes carefully on the floor and went barefoot into the kitchen with the mugs; there was Daniel’s dad reading yesterday’s Star and, in front of him, a freshly brewed pot of tea waiting under a knitted cosy. He looked up and said, ‘All right, love?’ as if nothing was more natural than that Alison Connor should materialise before him at half past five on a Saturday morning. She blushed, feeling caught in the act, and ashamed, but he just said, ‘Sit down, lass, you need summat warm in your belly before you go. Any road, there’s no buses yet.’ So she tipped the cold tea into the sink and washed the mugs, while behind her Bill Lawrence poured two fresh ones.

She loved Mr Lawrence. She liked Mrs Lawrence too, and Mrs Lawrence liked Alison, on the whole; it was just she had a weather eye out for her younger son and this caused her to hold back, and wonder if this girl was too young, and too unsteady, to be trusted with Daniel’s heart. But Bill – he was smitten. Daniel said it was because Alison asked his dad questions about the pigeons, when nobody else was interested. This might have been true, but Alison didn’t need to know why she and Bill Lawrence had clicked; she only needed to know she could rely on his smile.

‘I’m really sorry, Mr Lawrence,’ she said now, taking a seat opposite him. ‘I should’ve left last night.’

‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘Not after dark, not after closing time. You did right, staying put.’

‘Well, thank you,’ she said. She knew he would never ask if she’d be missed, at home. He seemed to understand Alison’s taboos without being told.

She sipped her tea, he slurped his.

‘Do you always get up this early?’ Alison asked.

‘Aye. This time o’ year, any road.’

‘Because it’s light?’

‘Aye, and I like the quiet.’

‘And the pigeons wake early too, I expect?’

‘Aye, love, they do.’

There was a comfortable pause, then Alison said, ‘Could we have our tea in the loft?’