Ruthy seemed to be having quite a nice time with them but was very homesick and cried for a while on the phone, which made me want to cry too, but I was worried if I did, Aunty Jean would say I couldn’t ring and upset her, so I sniffed all the snot up. After that call, Uncle Paul said he didn’t have the number for Daniel or for Maynard, but he would look them up at work and bring the numbers home the following night. I ran to him and gave him a hug, which wasn’t hard, because he wasn’t much bigger than me all bent over, and he patted me on the back and said I was welcome. He also told me to come to see him any time I was worried about something and we would problem-solve together, rather than me making up a solution by myself. This was such a reassuring idea that I hugged him again. I’m not sure how much he got hugged, because he really seemed to appreciate it. He kept forgetting to get the other two numbers and addresses, but I was sure eventually he would remember because he was a kind person. I didn’t nag him because I thought if Aunty Jean heard me, she would interfere. At least I had two numbers now and I had heard Caleb and Ruthy’s voices, which was better than only seeing them on Sundays.

The second very bad thing that happened was at Sunday school prize night. I got to see Dad on Sunday mornings at the Memorial Meeting, when all three of us sat next to him in a row. We were always so glad to see him that we didn’t play up and he told us he was very proud of us. If there was a communal lunch, he had lunch with us and then said goodbye as we got ready to go into Sunday school at 3 pm. He picked Caleb up from Sunday school at four and had dinner with Aunty Maisie, and that made Caleb very lucky because he got to see Dad for most of the day. I used to run out of the hall as soon as my class finished and wait on the pavement so I could see him before he took Caleb away. I tried to be brave and cheerful so I wouldn’t upset him. But I could feel my heart breaking and breaking and breaking when his car drove off, and sometimes I had to go into the girls’ toilets and cry a bit before I let the Roystons find me to go home.

I wanted to go into the Sunday night meeting so I could nurse his Bible and hymn book and sit with him, but Aunty Jean said I would be too tired for school on Monday and made me stay at home with Maudie and Helen. This caused me to be sad and bad-tempered and meant I often tried to pick a fight with them. They would just look at me in surprise and refuse to have an argument back. I suspect this is because they were more godly than me by quite a long way. I did wonder sometimes though if godly and boring went hand in hand. I didn’t want to be boring, so did that mean I would never be accepted into the Kingdom of God when Jesus came back and we all came up out of the dust of the earth to be judged?