Ruthy and I had a list of other jobs too, but Caleb’s only other job was to clean Dad’s shoes on a newspaper on the laundry floor, which he quite liked doing. Dad was always happy with them and thanked Caleb every morning, which was nice, but Mum said, ‘Careful, Harry, or you’ll make him spoilt.’ The main reason for Caleb only getting a couple of jobs was that he was a boy and in our church men were always the head of the family and didn’t do women’s work. Boys were also the most loved.

Ruthy had to put all the week’s towels into the outside copper room for washing on Saturdays and to tidy up her toys. I had to spread all three beds, wipe out the bath once we’d all had our three-times-a-week wash, run the hoover around the lounge and bedroom carpets, help Mum push the clothes through the mangle in the laundry and, because I was nearly as tall as Mum, help her to hang out the washing on the Hills Hoist, ‘Without leaving peg marks I can’t iron out please, Dorcas.’ I also had to iron the tea towels, sheets and anything else flat. Luckily, she didn’t trust me with clothes yet.

If we did our chores, Dad would give us pocket money on Friday nights. This was also our best night because Dad came home before we went to bed and watched the tellie with us for half an hour while we all shared a family-sized block of Cadbury’s milk chocolate. Even though every Friday I told myself to savour my share and keep it for as long as possible, I always chewed and swallowed it straight away.

Caleb would eat his a square at a time and wait until each one had melted in his cheek, so it lasted longer. Ruthy wrapped half of hers in any silver paper that was left on the table and then put it in the fridge so she could eat it on Saturday when Caleb and I were gobbling the mixed lollies we bought from Mrs Abrahams. Dad said the way we each ate chocolate was a metaphor for the way we lived our lives, that Cadbury’s told the whole story. I asked Ruthy to explain metaphor, and she tried, but her explanation left me none the wiser.

We always wanted to watch tellie for longer than we were allowed, but when we nagged, Mum would remind us that the only reason we had a television at all was because we went to the progressive ecclesia in Halifax Street in the city – we call our churches ‘ecclesias’ – and that if we’d been members of a suburban ecclesia we probably wouldn’t have been permitted to have a tellie in the house at all. We knew this was true, because if we ever had visitors from what Dad called ‘the suburbs’, the kids seemed a bit nervous about talking to us because of our worldliness, and several told us they had no television in their house. So that did make us think.