My room was on the top storey of the old terrace house—it looked as though it had once been one great big room and was now partitioned into three. Luckily I had one of the front two with the dormer windows, and the possibility of climbing out onto the roof tiles on a nice day for a smoke and sunbake. Lizzie taught me this trick; she lived in the other dormer room and worked in a factory which had made ladies’ clothing before the war and now made army uniforms. (‘Dull as a post,’ she complained.) She had a sewing machine in her room and let me borrow it sometimes, so I made a pair of shortie pyjamas out of an old dressing-gown and took up the hem on a secondhand dress.

In some ways Mrs Mulligan’s was nicer than our house—the toilets were all indoors and there was a bathroom on the second floor with a huge clawfoot tub and a chip heater. As there were only nine women in the house, we could each bathe as often as three or four times a week if we liked, and there were few things as lovely as turning the lock on that door, lighting the chip heater, filling a steaming tub and lying down for twenty minutes, feeling the tension and grime soak out of me and dissipate with the steam.

My room had a single bed with a small table beside it, a shelf below a mirror which was crowded with all of my make-up and lotions, and a sink beside that. There was also a wardrobe that smelled so musty I scrubbed it out with white vinegar and warm water on my very first day, and a desk with a wobbly wooden chair beneath the dormer window. That was where I kept my gas ring for the kettle and tea. The floorboards creaked and the wallpaper was peeling, but as shabby as it was I loved it because it was my own.

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

We’re lying in our beds and the sky outside the window is dark. There is the rumble and occasional jolt of the engine far beneath us, a slight vibration I’ve grown used to. The reading lamp above my bed is still on, Grandma has just turned hers off.