‘Why? How, even?’ She remembered that terrible night. Mrs Nugent next door had banged on the wall ten times to warn Danny that enough was enough, but the more she banged the louder he roared. The argument had started over a stew. She had spent half the day making it and he’d said it tasted like pigshite. He had kicked and slapped her before but that was the first time he’d used his fists. When the bell rang she was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. She heard him open the door and argue with someone as he was pushed to the floor. She couldn’t move so she lay there trying to work out what was happening. For a second she’d thought they were being robbed, but then she saw Fred’s kind face and his uniform. He was on his knees, looking down on her. ‘Don’t move. We’ve got you, love. Is that ambulance on its way, Dempsey?’ he shouted to the other guard, who was holding Danny.

‘Get the fuck off me,’ Danny shouted, ‘yis fucking toerags.’

Fred had placed a blanket on Maisie and held a clean tissue to her bleeding nose, mouth and eye. ‘Take him to the car,’ he’d called, and Maisie heard the other guard wrestle him outside.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘I know you’re busy.’ As the shock and numbness subsided, she realized he was holding her hand.

He had pushed her dark curls off her bleeding forehead with his other hand. ‘Never too busy.’

‘I’m Maisie.’

‘Fred.’

‘I made a big mistake, Fred.’ Before he could respond the paramedics had arrived and taken over. She’d waved at him as they loaded her into the ambulance. He’d waved back.

‘How could you fall for that?’ she asked now.

‘You were so lovely,’ he said, ‘but I think it was the wave that did it. You had such dignity, Mai, even during the worst of it. It was like the world was going mad around you but you never let it change you.’

Oh, I changed. ‘I got harder.’

‘You got tougher. It’s different.’

‘That was the first time I was away from my kids. Mrs Nugent took them, do you remember?’

‘Remember? I had to give her twenty quid out of my own pocket to do it.’

‘No way!’

‘She was a hard auld bitch.’ He chuckled.

‘Yeah, but I’d be dead without her,’ she said, ‘and I’d be dead without you.’

Fred stroked her arm. ‘I would never have acted on it, of course, and I was a bit of a mess myself back then. I was still mourning Joy, but I want you to know that for me it was love at first sight.’

Maisie took a moment to let that settle in. ‘Seven years is a long time to get around to asking me out.’