‘Where would I get a loan from?’ she asked.

‘What do you want that for?’ asked Freda, whose life was small, limited to this fuck-all work in Woolies, to home, to telly, to nothing very much at all. Sylvia had no ambition. She was a sweetheart, but she was thick as two planks covered in pig shit, there was no getting away from that fact.

‘Never you mind. No matter. Forget I said anything,’ said Nula.

But Sylvia didn’t forget it. She came in next day and said: ‘There’s a bloke does loans. My dad said. Here’s his address.’ She handed her mate a scrap of paper.

‘Thanks.’ Nula eyed it with suspicion before slipping it into her overall pocket. She’d try another bank, see what she could come up with. She didn’t like the idea of some bloke off the street, it didn’t seem official, or business-like.

The next bank laughed at her, too. She was a shop girl with no savings, and she was asking for a sizeable loan.

Nula slunk home again and stood inside the larder door and actually ate a large slice of the cake, before going out into the yard and sticking her fingers down her throat to bring it all back up again. Crying, choking, she sat on the cobbles beside the tin bath hanging from its nail on the wall.

Then she dragged herself to her feet, went back into the scullery and pulled her dirty overall out from the washing pile. The note from Sylvia was still in the pocket and she got it out, spread it, stared at it.

She straightened, took a breath.

All right then.

Charlie Stone.

12

What Nula hadn’t expected when she pitched up at the address on the note was that Terry Barton would open the door. It threw her completely. She felt her jaw actually drop as she stared at his handsome features. He’d always been tall, but now he’d bulked up, gained a lot of muscle. He looked fearsome. More of a man than he’d ever looked before. And worse – humiliatingly, awfully worse – he had her there with him, giggling and twining around him like bindweed. Slim pretty Jill Patterson who’d been in Nula’s class at school, her of the blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Nula hated Jill. Jill had been one of those capable winning girls, first a milk monitor and then a prefect, bossing the other kids around while Nula had skulked in the background, envious and silent, with all the other no-hopers.

‘Yeah, what is it?’ Terry asked.

As he stood there staring at her, half-laughing because Jill was in his arms and she was tickling him, it struck Nula: he didn’t recognize her. Didn’t know that the fat pitiful ball of lard he’d once danced with out of sympathy was her.

Well, that was good. She’d had humiliations enough to last a lifetime.