‘I feel the same about Davey,’ Carol admitted. ‘Oh, I know to you he ain’t no prize. But to me he’s like my life’s blood. I couldn’t exist without him, you know?’ Her hard features softened as she spoke and Donna saw the girl she had been, many years before.

‘Sometimes it wouldn’t take nothing for me to batter him to death with a baseball bat, especially when I know he’s been out tomming. But the underlying fact of it all is, I couldn’t even begin to think of living without him.

‘We get older, girl,’ Carol went on sadly, ‘but men don’t. Oh, they do in years but not in the brain. Most men’s cocks rule their heads till they’re in their dotage. You only have to look at the politicians who get tumbled because of a bit of skirt. What we have to do is swallow it, no matter how much it hurts.’

Donna nodded, understanding flooding through her.

‘I could never believe the way those women stood by their husbands after they’d been publicly ridiculed . . .’

Carol laughed. ‘I can, because without them they’re nothing. They don’t want to try and find a new life at forty or fifty odd. They want the bills paid, a good car, a nice drum. They want to be paid out for bringing up the kids and taking the flak all those years. They want what the younger bird wants. They want his protection. Even in the enlightened nineties there ain’t many women who can survive without a man as well as they do with one.’

Donna sighed. ‘I never thought I would talk like this, Carol. I thought I had it all, and I did. But only because I was ignorant about most of it. No, not ignorant exactly. I was deliberately blind, deaf and dumb. The three wise monkeys had nothing on me. I’m only sorry we didn’t get more friendly over the years.’

The two women looked at each other, gazed deep into each other’s eyes.

‘I hated you for years,’ Carol admitted in a rush. ‘I hated your self-contained ways, your snooty hooter always stuck in the air. I hated the way you talked, acted. I hated you because I couldn’t be like you, no matter how I tried. I could only be me.’

Donna grasped the other woman’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I wish I was like you, Carol. I mean that from the heart. At least you take what life gives you and you throw it back into its own jaws. You’re strong. A strong woman.’

Carol smiled. She saw Donna’s thick glossy hair and understated clothes. The curve of her small breasts covered by silk. She saw the slim legs, knew Donna wouldn’t have a real flaw on her body. No stretch marks, no varicose veins, no black roots.