‘We sure are. We’re Kellow girls.’

‘Kellow girls,’ Ruby repeated.

‘Oi!’ Bella shouted from the top of Fore Street, waving from the other side of the slipway as she pushed baby Glynn in his pram in the early-morning sun.

‘She’s got some gob on her,’ Ruby noted.

‘She has. I sometimes hear her yell when I’m in Thornbury.’

They both laughed a little, as much as their sadness would allow.

Bella came close and jumped up on to the wall with baby Glynn snug as a bug, asleep and swaddled warmly in his pram.

‘Look at us all up and out like early birds!’ Merrin commented.

‘Actually, I haven’t been to bed,’ Bella corrected her. ‘Not in the way we used to in the olden days when I didn’t have to be a responsible adult and we danced till dawn, but in the way that I got drinking tea, and then before I knew it, the sun was coming up, and here I am. I thought the funeral was the best it could be.’ Bella smiled. ‘I think we did Ben proud and Jarv did so good with them singers.’

‘He really did.’ Ruby beamed with a pride that was heartening.

‘And you’re heading back to Thornbury and Miguel this afternoon?’ Bella pulled a sad face.

‘I am; need to find a way to hide my eyes that I’ve cried into little puffy slits and my sore nose that won’t stop running. I look a right state.’

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you it is what’s inside that counts?’

‘Oh, Bells! Says the girl who won’t go out to the doorstep to collect the milk if she hasn’t got her push-up bra in place,’ Ruby tutted.

‘I wasn’t talking about what my mother told me, I was talking about what her mother told her!’ Her friend gave the thin defence.

‘Do you really believe that, Bells? That the outside wrapping doesn’t matter?’ Ruby snorted her laughter. ‘Cos you sure used to spend a lot of time making sure you were nicely wrapped!’

‘Truthfully?’ Bella seemed to consider this. ‘I think men want the whole package. They want you to be funny, smart and sexy.’

‘What about what we want?’ Merrin asked a little sheepishly.

‘The same, I think, and why not?’ Bella stood her ground.

‘Agree.’ Ruby looked up to the bedroom window where her husband slept. ‘I guess I got lucky with my Jarv.’

She and Bella looked from one to another, as if not quite seeing the same level of appeal, but knowing what voicing it would mean, even in jest.

‘You sure did.’ Merrin snuggled up to her sister.