Bess shook her head. ‘They never knew. I couldn’t tell them.’ Her tears came again, as she remembered going away on a fictitious course to learn how to be an air hostess. They had been so proud, sending her off with her suitcase packed and a Tupperware box full of cheese and tomato sandwiches and a stack of shortbread biscuits and the thermos that had once been half full of Cinzano now awash with stewed tea. Six months later, Bess had returned home to her parents, quiet, withdrawn and a little broken, explaining to them how she had failed the course and would not therefore be taking to the skies. They had ushered her up to her bedroom and showered her with reassuring platitudes, ruffling her hair as they hugged her better, telling her it didn’t matter, nothing did! Loving her so deeply and so completely that she knew the last thing she could do was tell them she had had sex with a relative stranger in an alleyway and then given birth to a little girl – how could she, when she was their little girl? How could she shatter not only their perception of her but also the safe warm nest in which they lived – her haven, untainted by the sordid reality of what she had endured? Bess had lain on her bed with the walls closing in. The longing in her womb was the very worst kind of pain and the inability to mention her baby girl the very worst kind of torture.

She had withdrawn, and the once chirpy girl went quiet and took a cleaning job in a supermarket, letting the world rush by. Nervous to say anything for fear of letting her thoughts escape through her mouth, she kept her head down and, by not looking up, minimised the risk of catching the eye of someone who might look at her in the same way Tony had outside the rugby club that night. She also avoided making friends or falling in love, because without friends or lovers she never had to worry about letting her guard down, would never be tempted to tell or confess that she had done the most terrible thing. How would she have ever been able to say, ‘I got pregnant at sixteen and handed my baby girl over as if she was a wrapped gift. I only saw her for a few hours and then they took her from me, and I lay on the bed, leaking milk and blood, and I wanted to die . . .’?

That was until Mario walked into the staffroom, smiling, kindly and interested in her.

Michelle had never called until earlier today. Their lovely friendship became collateral damage of the choices Bess had made, yet even now when an advert came on the radio for Paulson’s Skips, Bess wanted to cry, and often did.

‘So how did you manage? How did it all happen? You were just a kid!’