He’d say, ‘But you need to understand that there are rules in this house . . .’

I’d say, ‘This isn’t your house.’

He’d say, ‘I understand that, Snow, and as I say, I don’t want to replace your father, but don’t you think that we can be friends?’

I thought, ‘To be friends with my mum’s boyfriend? That’s not going to happen!’ And thank God after a while he at least gave up trying to win me over and just got on with being all lovey-dovey with Mum, which included going out on what they called ‘dates’ – which was so embarrassing because ‘dates’ were actually dancing up the pub, where people could see them together and know that they weren’t married.

One particular night they got dressed up in fancy costumes so they could ‘hit the town’, as Mr Cooper loved to say, and I couldn’t believe it when he came out of the big bedroom to show me what he was going to wear, saying, ‘What do you think, Snow?’

He was standing side-on so I could see how he’d drawn sideburns onto his face and how he’d stuck some kind of grease in his hair to make a quiff. Then my mother came out of the big bedroom and she was wearing a fifties skirt with a net petticoat, and her hair was like a beehive and she said, ‘It’s a fifties night! Come on, take our picture, Snow!’

We had an old Polaroid in those days, but the idea that I was going to use it to take pictures of Mum dressed up to go out with Mr Cooper was ridiculous. I just got up and went to my room. I heard my mother saying, ‘Oh, come on, Snow, can’t I have a bit of fun?’

Mr Cooper said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Roslyn, she’ll come around,’ and there was a sound like Mum was crying, but they still went out and left me there with the TV on and no babysitter except for Mrs Andrewartha’s phone number written on a piece of paper, in case, I don’t know, the house caught fire or something.

Snow

Chapter Four

I’ve been trying to remember how long I sat with Ruby Moore during our first interview at the Sir Stanford. It’s the kind of thing I can usually figure out from the length of the recording on my digital device, but we kept talking long after I’d run out of batteries on that, and long after I’d run out of paper in the notebook as well.

I remember the hotel staff coming into the dining room at some point to start clearing away what was left of the breakfast buffet – greasy strips of bacon and the gone-cold eggs – and start re-setting the tables for lunch. I remember that not many people came in for lunch so the big steel buckets of prawns with the chunks of lemon were soon getting cleared away too.

To the hotel’s credit – and Ruby tells me they were pretty fantastic through all of this – none of the waiters ever once asked us to move, and they only really bothered us every hour or so with a question about whether Ruby might want some more hot water for the tea, or whether I was sure that I didn’t want another coffee.