Lavinia had been referring to the letter Mary Kate had inadvertently found; it was from Nicholas’s former partner, Robin, with whom it had transpired Lavinia was having an affair. They still had the letter. It was all that stood between him and ruin and he thanked God that Mary Kate had found it because if she hadn’t, he couldn’t bear to imagine what Lavinia might have done to both himself and Mary Kate by now.

The noise of the radio in the kitchen broke into his thoughts and brought him back to the present. Joan was moving noisily about downstairs and the kettle was whistling. The pipes clanked as the water ran into the sink and Joan sang along to the radio, slightly too loudly, one of the many liberties she now took as payment for working in a house of ‘the most unspeakable of all sins’. ‘When my little girl is smiling…’ her voice bellowed up the stairs.

‘Look how hard it was to keep Joan,’ Mary Kate said, gesticulating towards the open bedroom door with the hairbrush. She frowned. ‘She still threatens to leave almost every day. If it wasn’t for Mrs O’Keefe, we probably would have been run out of the avenue with all the wild gossip. As it is, no one here speaks to me.’

He covered the distance between them, threw his arms about her and hugged her into him, causing the stool to squeak and shift across the carpet. ‘But it will be different once your family meet me and I explain everything to them…’

Mary Kate pulled away and shook her head. ‘Do you know, one of the women in the avenue actually crossed to the other side of the road yesterday when Joan and I took the bus into town. Liverpool is a Catholic city, Nicholas. Can you imagine? This is just a small taste of how bad it would be at home.’

Anger flashed across his face as he turned over the first cuff. ‘Who was it?’ His tone was controlled, but his smile and happy demeanour had evaporated and his eyes were focused on her reflection.

‘I’m not telling you because I don’t trust you not to knock at her door and give out to her on your way to work. I’m not going to have them calling you a bad-mannered brute and damaging your reputation on my account – not likely.’ She brushed her hair as her eyes still held him in her view. Then she smiled.

His face relaxed and he smiled back at her, although this time it didn’t quite reach his eyes. She was right. He couldn’t help himself. All he wanted to do was protect her and when he heard stories of how she was ostracised, he was filled with an anger he was wholly unused to.

‘Are you seeing Cat today?’

Mary Kate laid down the brush and gathered her hair into a large tortoiseshell clip. This was far safer ground. ‘I am. I’m going with her to take Debbie for her hospital appointment and then I’ve promised Debbie that as it’s her fourth birthday tomorrow we will call into a café for cake on the way home.’