Dora straightened then and turned a look of pure hatred on her aunt. ‘Stuff it up your arse, you rotten old cunt,’ she shouted.

‘Well I . . .’ Aunt Min’s mouth dropped open in shock.

Then the tears came, and Dora stumbled from the room and up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door closed after her, trying to shut out the world.

‘Oh Christ, oh Christ,’ she wailed, and flung herself down in the window seat, clutching at the growing swell of her belly like a life raft in an ocean of turmoil.

Her baby’s father was dead.

She couldn’t believe it.

Dead.

And as she stared out at the rain, running like tears down the windowpane, and listened to the howl of the fierce wind sweeping up the valley, rattling the window frame, she saw it; a big raincoated figure was standing at the end of the track by the farm gate, the pale blur of the face turned toward the house.

Her heart stalled in her chest.

Someone was out there, watching.

Dora shrank back from the window.

‘Oh God help me,’ she moaned.

Frank had done for Dickie, and now he’d found her and she was going to go the same way. But when she dared to look again, the figure was gone.

40

Dora had to help with the cleaning, every day. It was like a penance she had to do; Aunt Min was working her doubly hard now because she’d sworn at her. Aunt Min’s many ornaments – which Dora had to dust – included a line of miniature bottles of alcohol, all lined up around the picture rail in the lounge. Whisky, gin, brandy, all the big names were there, and Dora got up on a chair and picked off one bottle every time she dusted them, spacing the little bottles further apart and wondering if Min would spot the missing ones, and almost hoping she would, hoping it would drive the mean-mouthed old bat crazy. Dora stashed the bottles in her suitcase, enjoying the devilment of it.

In the long lonely evenings up in her room, she drank a few of the miniatures. It took the edge off, softened her misery, seemed to smooth out some of the rotten knocks she’d taken in her life so that she could sleep easy instead of churning about with this bloody awful bump pressing on her innards all the time and keeping her awake.

And then Easter came and Min started dragging her off to church on Sundays.

‘You’re evil, child, and this just might save your tainted soul,’ said Min.

Dora had never gone near a church at home, but Aunt Min was keen on all the bells and whistles of the Sunday service, she loved shaking hands with the vicar and lording it with her husband’s sprawling acreage over the poorer community members, playing Lady Bountiful, so on Sundays Joe smarmed his thin hair down with Brylcreem, Min put on a hat, and Dora put on a big coat at Min’s insistence, to conceal the bulge of her pregnancy.