She saw the face so clearly. If she looked hard enough she could see it in anything, and so clearly he had only to open his mouth and speak. ‘Simon, where are you? What happened? What? Where are you now?’

How was it that a man, a full-blooded, big-bodied man who had fathered a child in a woman, in love, could walk to work one day and never come back. She had searched. Eight months gone as she was at that time, she had walked the six miles to the factory, along the same road that he had set out on confidently every morning and returned from wearily in the evenings. It was the time of the bus boycott and all the people were walking and Simon was that sort of man that when the people walked, he walked…and not come back. No sign of him, no word, no memory. ‘He just didn’t come, Miriam. There was a lot. It was winter, sister, and dark in the mornings. It was a long walk. You never saw who walked beside you.’

‘Simon, where are you?’

‘They will jump up in front of you, my child, if you fall asleep.’ The words, gentle, spoken with that soft echo in which youth hears the voice of old age, made Miriam start out of her reverie. The queue had moved again. She picked up her paraffin tin, hurried forward and then looked back to see who had spoken. He was an old man, but the first grey hairs were just appearing now from a lifetime of staring deep into the fire in smoke-filled rooms.

Miriam dropped her eyes. Her gaze had been too bold.

The old man saw the respect and laughed. ‘They do jump in front,’ he said. ‘One day I never moved at all they did it so cleverly. It is the young ones, the children.’ He was carrying a jam tin with a piece of wire looped through two holes near the top. He saw her look at it.

‘My tea,’ he said. ‘On Sunday I have afternoon tea.’ Then thinking of the queue again, he laughed. ‘Sometimes I have my afternoon tea for supper.’

He asked Miriam her name, her age, where she came from and how many children she had.

For a moment a few of the inevitable questions concerning a man called Simon, which she had asked every stranger she met, were on the tip of her tongue. But she didn’t speak. Catching herself in this gesture of defeat, she looked up boldly at the old man.

‘My husband,’ she said.

He listened gravely, pretending not to notice the lump that was choking back her words. Before she could speak again he inclined his head forward, drawing her attention to another movement in the queue. They shuffled forward and after that she tried again.

‘My husband went to work and didn’t come back.’

The old man listened, looking first at the stones and then at the sky.

‘With the others he walked to work but didn’t come back.’