I started stealing my dad’s money. Every time he came home he emptied his pockets out on to the sideboard and I started to nick his loose change. We all did, so I didn’t think it mattered. It was where you went to get money for the shops – milk or paraffin, a loaf of bread. When you didn’t bring it all back and got some sweets, no one noticed. Until my dad started asking, ‘Where’s my change?’

You weren’t supposed to take half a crown – at the most it could be sixpence, or a shilling. ‘Don’t take too much!’ Manus said. But it was too late – I was stealing, I took all of it.

My dad started checking and testing to find out who it was. He’d leave it on the side like he wasn’t thinking, but then he couldn’t work it out because we were all doing it, bit by bit, going and coming from the shops, when he was looking and when he wasn’t.

‘I won’t have thieves in my house!’ he shouted.

The shouting was getting my mum down, she said, things were hard enough already and it was only coppers, to let it pass. He looked at her furious, and said she could give in, but he wasn’t going to tolerate it, he was going to stamp on that kind of sickness before it spread.

I could see he was upset and he really meant it, but by then I wasn’t on his side, I didn’t want what he wanted. I was going around watching to see what he’d do to stop me. He kept money in his jacket pockets, I’d find it. He’d set traps of money round the house, I’d leave it alone. He’d send me to the shops, I’d bring him his change.

I started stealing ten bob and one-pound notes, spending them on food I wanted and being careful not to bring any of that change back into the house.

‘Who is stealing from me?’

Everyone was standing in front of him, looking around like it wasn’t them. ‘All you bloody bastards!’ This was when I took five pounds out the wallet in the bedroom. It was too much. I knew it was. I slipped it behind the skirting in the hall. But now it was all going to come out. I was going to get caught.

‘You,’ he said. My heart stopped and everyone looked at me. It was like a knife at the lump in my throat before I could lie. But then he said, ‘It wasn’t you. Go and sit down.’