‘Well, I think it’s fantastic,’ said Muriel. ‘Bring a bit of life to this dull old town. Mind how you go, Arthur,’ she called, as she tied her scarf tighter round her hair. Mother had settled back to her knitting. He hoped she didn’t see Muriel winking at him as she turned and left, holding the door open for old Mrs Hatchet.

‘I like your hair like that,’ she called as she disappeared out of the door.

‘She’s trouble that girl,’ said his mother.

Arthur saw his mother’s pinched mouth and grabbed a paper twist of sugar.

‘She’s forgotten something,’ he called and disappeared out of the door, before his mother or Mrs Hatchet could say anything.

Muriel was still on the quay, one hand holding onto her scarf in the gusty wind. She turned at his voice and waited. He handed her the paper twist.

‘I… She should have…’

‘Thanks, Arthur,’ she said, and put it in her basket. The wind was flapping at the furled sails of the boats behind her in the harbour. He noticed she had a large cloth bag as well as her basket. She saw him looking. ‘Just on my way back from the Buttlands. Collecting laundry. Mum does some of them posh ones’ washing. She’s got me slaving for her as usual.’ There was resentment but no embarrassment.

A wash of grief fell over him for what they had once been. It was strange now, to think of the four of them together as they used to be. He, Muriel and the Frost children. It had all gone, their childhood: he had been cast out and so had she. Since he had been away he could see it more clearly.

Blinking, he tried to think of something to say. ‘I’ve not seen you for an age.’

‘You’ve been away,’ she said. He’d been back from National Service for a week now but he’d hardly seen Muriel since he’d gone to the grammar. ‘How was it then?’

‘Dull, like you wouldn’t believe. Didn’t see any fighting.’ He wondered why he always did that, incapable of putting a positive spin on anything.

‘I never saw you as the fighting type anyway. You looked dapper in your uniform, though. Your mother showed everyone a picture of you next to a plane. She kept saying how much you looked like your father when he was in the RAF. You were flying, weren’t you?’ She squeezed his arm.

He felt heat rise again up his neck. She’d always been direct and it had always caught him out. He had an image of Muriel, hair flying, jumping over the ditches that criss-crossed the grazing marsh with her bucket full of wriggling creatures.