‘Enough! People have laid everything on the line for you, done all they could to mend our relationship, and why? To help you, that’s why! Yet you were hateful to Roz from the word go, because you were jealous of her.’ She gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Jealous of a girl hounded out of her own country in fear of her life, jealous of a girl who doesn’t know whether her parents are dead or alive, who’s lost everything …’

‘What about me?’ snapped Suzie, hot tears of anger forming in her eyes. ‘Haven’t I lost everything?’

‘You hadn’t,’ said Joyce reasonably. ‘When Roz came to live in Crooked Lane you still had your father and grandmother …’

‘But I didn’t have you!’ Suzie exclaimed. ‘And it’s you I wanted! You were the only one who ever stood up for me; I lost everything the day you disappeared.’

‘And you’ve not forgiven me for that, that’s plain to see,’ said Joyce through thin lips.

‘Why should I? You could’ve stayed for my sake!’

With a look of sympathy, her mother’s voice softened as she spoke. ‘Do you not remember the beatings? I was black and blue half the time, and it was never going to get better. You know how scared I was of your father; even Lilith feared for my safety – not that she’d have admitted it, of course, because she didn’t want Callum’s anger to turn on her.’

‘I know,’ said Suzie sulkily, ‘that’s why it was so easy to believe he’d gone too far.’

‘I know you love him, your gran too, and that’s only right, but you have to see, I had to leave for my own safety, otherwise he really might have killed me, by accident or otherwise.’

Suzie whimpered as the truth behind her mother’s words resonated in her soul.

‘Suzie?’ said Joyce. It was obvious by her daughter’s hunted look that she was hiding something.

Looking up, Suzie spoke thickly through her tears. ‘That night when the air raid siren sounded, he made Gran stay home as punishment.’ Gulping back the tears, she continued, ‘He forced me to go to the shelter. I ran back as soon as he’d gone, but I was too late …’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Bernie, all thoughts of Suzie’s vicious revenge temporarily forgotten.

Joyce enveloped her daughter in a tight embrace. ‘I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that, but surely you must see why I had to leave?’

Suzie nodded, her face buried in the crook of her mother’s shoulder. ‘I know he’s bad, he steals from the dead and loots people’s houses during raids, he’s the lowest of the low, but he’s still my dad, or at least he was.’