But she hadn’t got the chance to change her mind, because the Daimler’s engine wouldn’t go when Mal had tried to fire it up again – she’d listened to the scratch and wheeze each time he pressed the starter. Eventually, he’d given up and stepped into the alley. ‘What’s the matter with your motor?’ she’d said, as he’d walked around the back end, looking sheepish. It was rare to find a man so tall she couldn’t see the top part of his scalp from yards away.

‘Gone and drained the battery, I think,’ he’d said. ‘Ah, well. It was a nice one, too.’

For a second, she’d been puzzled, wondering what made one battery any nicer than another. Then she’d watched him open up the boot. He’d tossed the key with its big leather fob inside and slammed the lid. Turning slowly, he’d approached her. His enormous rubber soles had made no sound at all. He’d held his finger to his lips and shushed. ‘I never got your name, but that’s all right, I trust you.’ With a wink, he’d backed away and strolled along the alley.

No young girl would ever look upon Mal Duggan as a picture worthy of a frame, but his appeal was in his attitude to life. He seemed to drift along without the worries that tied other people down and buried them. One day’s graft after the next was not Mal’s style. He was spontaneous, which made him unpredictable and dizzying. His confidence was like a tonic she’d been given to forget the fears that were ingrained in her – all those notions that she’d wind up miserable, a failure, on her own for good. So what if there was menace in him, too? A little danger meant excitement, didn’t it? And if she’d wanted boredom she’d have stayed in school and lived the drab existence that her aunty wanted her to have in Borough Green. Church on Sundays. Married off to some God-fearing member of the congregation no one else would have, ironing his smalls throughout the week and cooking him two different kinds of gravy for his roast. No, thank you.

That was why she’d moved to Maidstone in the first place: to escape. She’d left with hopes of finding a nice boarding house beside the river, but it hadn’t quite turned out that way. The only room she could afford to lodge in was a long walk from the water and there hadn’t been enough space for a proper bedstead, let alone for Charlie to come visiting on weekends. She’d had to make do with a mattress propped up on a sheet of ply and bricks. No heating. No one else to blame for where she was, only herself.

She’d made the choice to leave her brother back in Borough Green until she could provide for him. Her aunty wanted him to stay put till he turned eighteen and maybe they’d have come to some arrangement if there hadn’t been so much resentment lingering. Aunty Helen, as they called her, was really just their father’s second cousin. She’d been widowed years before the war – her husband used to work for ICI and had some sort of illness they weren’t ever meant to ask about – and it had turned her pious and unforgiving. All that Bible worship must’ve made a husk out of her brain, because she thought a bit of devilment on Joyce’s part (or any girl’s) was something only scorn and judgement could resolve. Compassion was a pantomime she’d put on for the vicar. She reserved her better side for Charlie – all her patience and soft-soaping – but, even then, she shovelled on her kindness till it cloyed and smothered him and made him tense.