She liked living in this suburb of south London. It had a strong sense of community, even if it was a bit rough around the edges. People generally looked out for one another, you’d recognize faces in the street and say hello, and there was always a summer fair in the park; more cheap candy floss and tacky bric-a-brac stalls than gourmet ice cream and homemade crafts but it was something. It was all she could afford anyway, when she moved to her tiny two-up two-down twenty-odd years ago. The rent had eaten up just over half of her small salary from the garden centre, the first of a succession of dead-end jobs.

It wasn’t the way her life had been planned. Kate’s mother, Dervla, a strict working-class Irish woman, had insisted on an all-girls Catholic school when Kate was growing up, her determination silencing Kate’s dad’s wish for something more mainstream. It wasn’t posh, just authoritarian and stuck in the sixties. Dervla had become increasingly more severe as her miscarriages had come along. Kate was the first baby, but she had four unborn brothers and sisters and ultimately remained an only child. It wasn’t a particularly happy home to live in, and once she was allowed to go to her first-ever teenage party, she felt the relief of freedom as she realized that the world was an easier, more opportunity-laden place than she’d believed. In the giddiness of the moment, she’d been flattered into losing her virginity. The new-found freedom was short-lived. Her Catholic upbringing meant an abortion wasn’t something she had the courage to face, and so the baby would be due in the middle of her GCSEs. She managed to attend some of her exams, but it was difficult concentrating when you were eight months pregnant and a curious specimen amongst the rest of the girls. She hadn’t been especially academic, but she’d been better than average, she would’ve got something. But with next to no grades, there would be no A Levels and no university. Her mother was struck dumb by her disappointment and her father was cowed into giving her barely more than a sympathetic smile when he could. The baby’s father was not much more than a kid himself and Kate didn’t even tell him.

It was a miserable, silent nine months while she worked weekends at the local garden centre, saving every penny she could. Then beautiful Becky had been born and she’d fallen in love with her. Two days later, Kate left the hospital and moved into the tiny house a few miles along from where she’d grown up. Her father had signed a lease for two years on her behalf (until she was eighteen) but he was unable to pay all the rent. Becky could only afford to stay off for four months and then she had to work full-time, leaving Becky with Iris. Her newly retired and newly widowed neighbour had been a godsend; she’d refused to accept anything but a token amount of babysitting money and only that to spare Kate’s pride, but it had still broken Kate’s heart as she’d wanted to be with her baby.