‘Where are the porters when you need them?’ Dee had said. Graham and Martin tried to help but really, Betty thought, they made it worse. They piled into a taxi at Willesden Junction, the boys wide-eyed at the extravagance of it all.

‘I’m frightfully rich,’ Betty said, winking at them.

‘You’ll rue the day you said that,’ Dee said.

Kevin was waiting for them, bear-hugged the boys, pecked Dee on the cheek, shook Betty’s hand then took her suitcases and carried them upstairs. The room was tiny, the cupboard too large, the chest of drawers old-fashioned.

‘You can paint it if you want,’ he said. ‘Make it your own.’ He put the cases on the floor, shook his hands. ‘What on earth do you have in them? They weigh a ton.’

‘Books,’ Betty said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Well, tea’s all ready,’ he said. ‘I’ve made enough for you too.’

She wasn’t hungry but she was drained, relief rinsing over her in waves.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, ‘I’ll unpack and call it a night.’ She crept up to her room, made her bed, tumbled into it. She’d need to buy hangers, lining paper for the drawers, odds and bobs. She’d forgotten her toothbrush. Little things.

They’d agreed a rent and ground rules on the way home.

‘That way,’ Dee said, ‘we know where we are.’

When had Dee become so wise and sensible?

§

Betty took after her father, built for sport, not ballet. She’d played netball at school, hockey at college. She had time now she lived closer to work. Perhaps she should join a team, take up a hobby, go to talks and lectures. Dance. Sing.

‘Plenty more fish in the sea,’ Dee said. ‘You could try the Hammersmith Palais.’

‘Give me a break,’ Betty said. ‘Let me get over John first.’ Trying to fathom what had happened, that was the hardest. If they’d not being getting along she could have understood it, even though seducing her and then abandoning her was unforgivable. But out of the blue? From heaven to hell in five seconds? Hadn’t even stopped and written her a letter.

Both Dee and Kevin were members of the Labour Party, so Betty babysat on those nights, reading Tribune and Peace News, checking out the meetings close to work or close to home. There was a women’s campaign that made the front pages. Diane Collins, asking ‘What can women do?’ Join the campaign, wear a badge, write to MPs, make one new contact a week…

Why is it always the women who have to pick up the pieces? Lieselotte had been fading from her memory but sometimes she sprang from nowhere, vibrant and vivid with her little dancer’s feet like Mutti and her thick chestnut hair that Betty loved to brush and plait, when Lieselotte let her.