Bessie spent the afternoon lying on her stomach on her bed with her feet crossed at the ankles and kicked up behind her, listening to the slow, doleful, haunting tones of Simple Minds on her tape recorder, which suited her melancholy. She had only ventured out of her room once, and that was under duress, so her family could sing her ‘Happy Birthday’ while she blew out the candles on her cake. The soft, pale, buttery sponge, which only that very morning she had been looking forward to, had tasted vaguely metallic on her tongue.

‘’Course, I was married at sixteen,’ her nan began, with a mouthful of sponge and buttercream dotting her top lip. Her mum and dad had exchanged a knowing look – the story was one her nan liked to share, and they had all heard it many, many times before, not that anyone had the heart to remind her of this.

‘Sixteen? That’s very young!’ her dad said, playing his part, and Bessie loved him for it.

‘Young, Eddie? I was a baby! Never been kissed! And there I was, being waltzed up the aisle.’

Bessie’s mum mouthed the latter part of the sentence over her mother’s shoulder, while Philip laughed softly.

‘He was in the Scouts and I was a Girl Guide and we went on a charabanc to Margate. He kept larking around in front of me and I thought he was a right show-off!’

Bessie pictured the scene around a kitchen table of her own in the future . . . We met properly at the bus stop. He was in the football team and I’d stayed late to pick litter . . . She smiled at the thought, this one bright moment cutting through the grief of her dire grades, but as she imagined this, Michelle’s words of earlier suddenly loomed large and her stomach churned at the thought of the conversation they needed to have.

‘So why did you marry him if you thought he was a show-off?’ Philip asked, as if Grandad Norm weren’t sitting only feet away.

‘Well,’ her nan said, adjusting her bosom and sitting back in the chair, ‘because he asked me! And it all happened quite quickly, and once I’d taken the plunge I quite liked him . . .’ Grandad Norm rolled his eyes and lifted the side of his mouth in a half smile. ‘Then the next thing I knew,’ Bessie’s nan continued, warming to her theme, ‘bloody war broke out and I didn’t think I’d see him again for years and it all felt very romantic, him going off to fight the Nazis in his uniform and me stuck at home with my sisters and none of them had a fella. I liked getting his letters. He made me feel special.’

‘I hope I always have Patsy.’ Bessie’s grandad winked at her and bit into his slice of birthday cake.