Finally she heard Pa, his voice mild, mollifying. ‘It’s not every day your only daughter turns sweet sixteen, Maggie. She’s a level-headed kid, she won’t overdo it. What harm could there be in half a pint on her sixteenth birthday?’

‘She might be level-headed, but what about her friends? Especially the boys? They won’t be content with just half a pint, you know that. And before long they’ll be pickled and getting into fights. Answer me that, Bob.’

He was caving in, as she knew he would.

‘And what’s wrong with the parish hall, anyway?’ her mother’s rant continued. ‘Mark had a good old do there for his sixteenth. We can do a fruit punch and sausage rolls, put on some of your old records . . .’

Kath turned back into her bedroom and closed the door. The dreary old parish hall that always smelled of damp, the toilets out the back filled with cobwebs and creepy insects? She didn’t want a ‘good old do’ like her brother Mark’s. It was just boring: the boys gathered in one corner, the girls in another, all shouting over the music and ignoring each other.

No, Kath had something more glamorous in mind: fairy lights, a glitter ball, a proper dance floor and a swing band: the world that Hollywood stars like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers seemed to inhabit. Okay, perhaps that was stretching it a bit, for Felixstowe. But a fruit punch in the parish hall was not how she’d envisaged celebrating her birthday, the end of her General Certificate exams, the last few weeks of school ever and the start of her life as an adult.

But what was that new life going to look like? She had no idea, and that worried her – not that she was letting on. That Saturday, she and Joan went to the beach and, after a short and numbingly cold dip in the sea, laid their towels on the sand to make a start on their tans.

‘This is more like it,’ Kath said, stretching out and closing her eyes. ‘Summer’s here at last. No more exams and soon no more school. Holidays forever.’

‘Aren’t you going to college?’ Joan said, leaning up on one elbow.

‘Hadn’t really thought.’

‘You’re going to get a job, then?’

‘Not if I can help it. Who wants to work in a shop or serve grumpy tourists in a cafe? On your feet all day?’ Kath squinted up at her friend, shielding her eyes with her hand. ‘That’s not for me.’

In fact, she knew her parents would be expecting her to find a job, at least until she got married. It was inevitable. Kath’s mother Maggie had always gone out to work, except when the children were young. Currently she was cook for a private school in Lower Walton, to which she cycled every day come rain or shine. The hours were ideal: she was always there when they got home from school and during the holidays. The extra income meant that the family had been able to buy their own three-bedroomed semi in a tree-lined street not far from the seafront with all mod cons: an electric cooker, a fridge and a vacuum cleaner. They even had a clothes washing machine.