In 1947, Mr. Fletcher was promoted, and the family moved house, to the other side of the bank, to a thoroughly suburban district of 1930s semi-detacheds, far from the grim terraces of South Romley, far from the fish-and-chip shops and dirty pubs. It was only two miles away, but the social difference was enormous. Mrs. Fletcher was, she claimed, overjoyed, and settled in to get herself properly straight at last. She arranged her furniture, she bought new stair carpets and a new three-piece suite, she made new curtains. Everything was spotless and shining, and smelled of polish and Windowclean and Airwick. She ceased to emerge even to shop, and sent Kate to do all her errands. In 1950, she persuaded Walter to buy her a television set, and settled herself in front of it. She became house-bound. Kate, even at ten and eleven, felt there was something wrong here, and that she should not be getting breakfast for her father and mother, then rushing off to school, then to the shops, or the laundry, or the cobbler’s, on the way home. But she did it, because she was told to do it, and because Mrs. Fletcher was always telling her how lucky she was not to have a working mother, like so many of the other girls. Kate secretly wished she had a working mother, for the children of these wicked women had the house to themselves every now and then and could make themselves little treats of baked beans or tinned spaghetti or dripping on toast, whereas Kate was never alone, and had to live up to high standards.

In fact, Kate realised that she alone in the family was not wholly pleased by its rise in status. She hadn’t been happy in Arblay Street, but something in her kept harking back to it fondly, as though it were real life and this were some kind of pretence. She nourished childish fantasies of returning to Arblay Street and making her brother’s tormentors eat their words. She would marry a lord and drive back in her Rolls. She would marry a film star and scatter their marbles. She would become a film star, and astonish them all by her radiant beauty. Hie children in Amalfi Road were weedy creatures, hardly worth astonishing, whose mothers made them stay indoors, do their homework, and go to bed early.