‘He was a bastard to me, my old man.’ Dolly’s voice had lost its jocularity now. ‘When I was pregnant with me boy, he knocked me from one end of that house to the other. I remember going up Mile End Road Hospital . . . oh, it must have been 1943. The bombing was well underway then, in the East End anyway. I had a black eye and a fat lip and the baby hadn’t moved for three days. I knew it was brown bread, like. He’d kicked me in the stomach. That was always old Joey’s finale. The kick in the guts.’ She flapped her hand in a gesture of contempt.

‘Anyway, in I went, all sorry for meself like, and they deliberately ignored me boatrace. Like I looked normal or something. In them days, see, it wasn’t discussed. Not like now, with all these shows on with people telling everyone how they can’t stop thieving or can’t stop gambling. In them days you kept your own counsel. Once you were married to the fucker, that was it, for better or worse, for richer or poorer. And believe me, girl, for most of us it was worse and poorer, not the other way round!

‘I was fifteen when I lost that little boy. Hard to imagine anyone married at fifteen, ain’t it? But back then, well . . . I had a belly full of arms and legs. The old man beat him up, we got wed, and that was it, the rest of your life. He was eighteen, with a cock that stood to attention if a breeze went up his trouser leg! Randy bugger he was. Probably still is.’

Donna listened to Dolly’s sad voice and felt the usual wave of anger at the treatment she and other women like her received.

‘Why did you stay with him, Dolly?’

‘That’s the hard one, girl. That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’ She put her head to one side and thought for a few minutes. ‘One, because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t go back to me mother’s. She still had six left at home younger than me, even if she was married. And two, because in a strange way I loved him. I loved him for a long time, you know. I know it’s hard to believe, but you must understand, in the war marriages were quick because you never knew what was around the corner, see? You could be bombed out, blown up, anything. So you did things you wouldn’t have ordinarily. Like let an eighteen-year-old bloke give you one in your back garden, up against the coal shed. It was the most exciting night of my life. He could have had the pick of all the girls and he chose me. Everyone was after him!’