Every day he met me after work, and all we sought was to be alone together. He was staying in barracks with nine other men in his room, so there was no opportunity there. The parks were patrolled by police wielding torches, and the park benches were filled with other soldiers and their lovers. The cinema was fine for kissing, but you weren’t going to let it go too far. We didn’t have a car, and I certainly wasn’t going to try my parents’ house. So we were simmering with lust, both of us desiring and unable to find the place or the time. We went dancing (he taught me the Jersey bounce, the jig walk, the jitterbug) and to the beach (diving into the surf in our swimming costumes, lying side by side on the sand; when he closed his eyes I studied the curves and lines of his body). We drank coffee, went walking and saw films, but all of it was exquisite torture, a substitution for what it was we really wanted to do.

Meanwhile, things at home were worse than ever. I couldn’t speak to Mum or Dad, having lied to one and knowing the other was lying. The tension between them was unbearable, so when I was there I shut myself in my room. The silence drove me mad. I decided it was time to move into my own place. I prepared a speech one night at dinner about why it was necessary, but to my surprise neither Mum nor Dad put up an argument. They were both too distracted by their own concerns. There was a room in a boarding house for women in Surry Hills run by a Mrs Mulligan. She kept the place respectable, with a curfew and no men allowed into the bedrooms, but she was also as deaf as a stone, so a few sneaked in after she fell asleep, and on more than one occasion my paper-thin walls let in noises I would rather not have heard. I stuffed cotton wool in my ears and buried my face under the pillow, but I never complained. After all, I considered sneaking Roy in myself. And I knew how it felt to have nowhere else to go.