‘Well, the kids like it.’ Dee shut the kitchen door, pulled out a chair and sat next to her.

‘Don’t ever ask me to do this again,’ she said, pulling out a piece of paper from her pocket, her mouth set in a hard, straight line. ‘Seems you have two options.’

Betty felt as if the weight had dissolved, her shoulders freed from their burden. ‘You’re an angel,’ she said.

‘I don’t approve,’ Dee said. ‘I hope you know that. You put me in a very difficult position.’

Betty nodded. ‘I know that, Dee,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you if I hadn’t been desperate.’

‘This is a mortal sin. I mean, I believe in the sanctity of life and all that,’ Dee said. Her mouth was tight and she shifted in her seat, adding, ‘But I know what it is to be up the duff too.’ She paused, nodded at the food. ‘Start before it gets cold.’

Betty cut into the sausage, shoved a piece into her mouth. She wasn’t hungry.

‘Right,’ Dee went on. ‘If you can get two doctors to say you’d be reduced to a mental wreck, you can get it done legally.’ She smiled. ‘That’s the good news.’

‘And the bad?’

‘It would cost about a hundred guineas, plus you’d need to pay the psychiatrists. God knows what they charge.’

Betty coughed hard, her stomach tightening. ‘A hundred? Where could I get that kind of money? That’s four months’ wages.’ She pushed the plate away. The batter was cold anyway. ‘You said there were two options?’

Dee opened the piece of paper, pushed it across the table. Betty pulled it towards her. A name, a telephone number. And written below it, £30 or £40? Depending. She shut her eyes. If she did it after payday, and lived on next to nothing for a month or two, she could rustle up perhaps a tenner. She had just over five pounds in savings. She fingered the gold chain round her neck. Her father had given it to her for her twenty-first. She could sell that. But even so. She twisted the ring on her finger. Mutti’s ring. She could pawn it. She’d never been into one of those shops, but then she’d never been in this position before. What did Dee call it? Up the duff?

‘Promise me one thing,’ Dee said. ‘That you’ll think very hard about what you decide to do.’ She stood up, added, ‘The woman used to be a nurse.’

Betty nodded. She looked at the debris on her dinner plate, the empty surface of the tabletop, the bare walls of Dee’s kitchen, and beyond, the garden with its patch of worn earth below the swing. She folded the paper and put it in her pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY

London: September 1958

It was over four weeks now.

‘Hide away,’ Arthur had suggested. ‘Lie low. Think about your options.’