As Suzie reached the bottom of the drive she looked along the road. To the left was Liverpool, but what was to the right? Suzie knew nothing of life outside the city because the only time she had ever ventured further than their neighbourhood had been when she went to Dovercourt, and that had been with the security of her grandmother and father by her side. She looked doubtfully at the road which led away from the city. For all she knew she could be walking for days before she got anywhere, and what would she do for food and shelter? She looked in the other direction. At least she knew Liverpool, so that was one advantage. She envisaged her old home before it had been burned to the ground, then Mercer Court where that dreadful Mabel and her family lived. Her jaw tightened as an image of Elsa Johnson appeared in her mind. If it hadn’t been for her, Suzie’s mother would most likely never have left home, and they would still be a happy family. She immediately quashed a tiny voice which tried to protest that they hadn’t been happy before her mother left. We may not have been blissfully happy, Suzie reluctantly admitted, but I was happier with Mam there than when she’d gone, and not just because of the knowing looks and whispered conversations between the neighbours, but because Mam was the only one who ever gave me cuddles, made me think I was worth summat, that Dad wasn’t always right, and that I wasn’t useless.