She wanted to spend every precious moment with her child: going on walks to the shore, paddling by the sea, getting to know all his funny ways. It would be a long route march to New Year and her next official visit. On the way to it she must pass through all the ‘this time last years’. The anniversary of Ray’s death had left her weak and Remembrance Sunday would be painful to observe again. She still had no picture in her head of where Rae was buried but Father gave her a certificate of condolence from the King which had arrived for her at Brigg Farm.

As Netta pushed the go-chair back to the farm along familiar lanes, pointing out landmarks and flowers to her baby; she wondered if she dare ask to have Ray to stay with her for a while, but in her heart felt it was hopeless even to venture such a suggestion. The hostel was no place for a bairn. She must work all hours if she was to find herself a proper home for him. And who would care for her baby all day? Besides, Peg scarcely let him out of her sight when she was around. The days rushed by and soon it was time to hand him back and kiss him a tearful farewell.

That second journey south went quickly and this time she got off at Leeds Station determined to find proper lodgings with open spaces to wheel a pram, somewhere closer to fields and trees where the sprawling suburbs thinned out into the country. Within two weeks she had found a room and kitchen close to Kirkstall Abbey and the River Aire where she could walk among parkland and over the hilly streets to Rosamund Street and the Blooms.

She cheered up the room’s shabbiness with a flurry of curtain making and cleaning, covering the dull moquette of the sofa with covers and cushions made from offcuts. It kept her hands from shaking with the yearning to hold Gus, as she must now call him. The name choked in her throat but she must thole it. Her room overlooked open spaces, the nearest she would ever get now to countryside. Only Dr Anwar’s words kept her from crumbling. Step by step she would shift herself further out from these black sooty streets towards green hills. One day she would have her own place with a garden where her son could play and roam safely, a place where she would be proud to entertain her relatives, set high above the twinkling lights of the town. One day she would make them all proud of her.

*

It was Arnie’s birthday and Vida had a streaming chesty cold. She was anxious he didn’t catch it and suggested he took Netta to the pictures instead as a friendly gesture for helping with Edna Gresty’s wedding dress.