You are a stupid, ungrateful girl, she told herself. You have so much to be thankful for. Gus is free and settled in a proper job. You have a job you love, and a boyfriend. What more could you want?

* * *

Life settled into a comfortable routine to which Gus introduced a surprising variation. Nan had taken a liking to him and agreed that he could stay with them until he had saved enough to find a decent place of his own.

One evening he said, ‘Why do we always buy pies or chips for supper instead of cooking our own?’

‘Because I’m no cook,’ Nan said.

‘And I had enough of scullery work when I was in service,’ May added.

‘There’s a difference between scullery work and cooking,’ he said. ‘And you should stop eating pies. You’re getting fat. Too much ice cream.’

It was true, May realised. Her skirt was beginning to feel uncomfortably tight round the waist.

‘Well, what do you want me to do about it?’ she asked.

‘You could eat better in the evening.’

‘I’m not going to start shopping and cooking on top of my day’s work.’

‘All right. I’ll cook.’

‘You? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘I can cook. I was the cook’s assistant on the Shenandoah. His name was Boney. He taught me a lot. Most of the time it was salt pork or tinned bully beef but sometimes, when we’d taken a prize that had fresh produce on board, he used to make special dishes for the officers, especially if it was a birthday or some such.’

Gus examined the kitchen and declared it only fit for pigs, then set to and cleaned it from top to bottom. He started going to the market on his way home and found he could buy vegetables and fruit that were past their best but perfectly edible, and cheap offcuts of meat. Soon he was producing tasty stews and even the occasional roast, and he insisted that they should all eat fresh fruit.

‘You don’t want to end up with scurvy, do you?’

May still enjoyed her ice cream, but as the weeks passed she found her skirt getting looser again.

In the evenings Nan still went out for her ‘constitutional’, leaving brother and sister alone. For the first time in their lives they came to know each other properly. May was surprised to discover that Gus liked to read, and he told her about the influence that Mason had had on him.

He started buying little books called ‘penny dreadfuls’, which told stories of pirates and highwaymen; then one day he came home with an armful of magazines called All the Year Round. They were the previous year’s editions, passed on to him by one of the clerks at White Star.