Aunty Jean’s favourite expression was grumpy. She was a great friend of my Aunty Maisie, and it seemed to me that if you liked Aunty Maisie, you had to end up looking a bit like her to stay in her club. This, I was sure, was a club to which I never wished to belong.

Aunty Jean had three chins, and the main one under her mouth had lots of thick grey and white bristles on it, and some hairs that were so long they curled up. She had the most enormous blackheads I’ve ever seen. Caleb called them The Pocks of Poo. I had to try not to keep looking at them because they were sort of fascinating. She looked very old but Mum said that she was only a few years older than her and she only looked that way because she was one of those matrons who refused to dye her hair and immediately moved to flat shoes and shapeless flowery dresses when she turned forty. Mum said that’s what happened to most women over forty in our church meeting, and there was no need for it because there wasn’t a commandment that said ‘Thou shalt look like an old bag of potatoes when you leave your thirties’.

Before the union exams, I had made Aunty Jean cross one Sunday by calling out across the church’s middle hall, ‘Aunty Jean, your teeth look very beautiful and shiny today.’ She stomped over to me and grabbed me by the elbow and shook me so hard my teeth sort of chattered independently in my mouth.

She said, ‘You dreadful child. You know fine well they are new and false. What a mean thing to say out loud.’ I honestly hadn’t realised they were false, and just kept saying, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ but she stayed cross with me. So I was a bit surprised they had agreed to take me in. I had asked Dad on the way to the Roystons’ if I couldn’t go and stay with my best friend Anne King, but Dad said the Kings were going on a big trip as soon as school finished and so it wouldn’t work out. I said I didn’t think that was right because Anne would have told me but Dad said it was going to be a surprise for her and I shouldn’t tell her. Dad should have known not telling Anne was going to be a big challenge right there.

If Peter Royston had shown any interest in knights, I might have considered marrying him. Although I didn’t like boys that much, I sometimes got a bit goofy around him and said mad things I didn’t intend. Once I had made a paper fortune-teller, one of those things where you fold up the paper into triangles and make them go in and out with your fingers. Anne called them chatterboxes. When I had asked it who I would marry, it had said Peter. I told Anne this, but she pointed out I had written all the names in it, and had written his name five times, so there was a good chance it was going to give me the name I wanted. But I was pretty sure there was some magic going on there and refused to accept her doubt.