Mam sinks down to sit on the pavement, pulling Alice with her.
‘Can you read it for me?’ she says to the boy, her voice almost a whisper.
He stares at her.
‘Go on,’ says Mam fiercely. ‘Please.’
Carefully, the boy opens the telegram.
He reads what is written there, mouthing the words to himself. Then he looks down at Mam and Alice, grinning.
‘It’s from someone called Jack, missus. He’s coming home on leave, Thursday week. All my dear love Jack, he says.’
Da is handsome and kind, exactly as Mam said.
He isn’t black and white like in the photograph. His eyes are brown, like Alice’s. His uniform is the colour of Alice’s scratchy cardie but the buttons are shiny and he has a cap he lets Alice try on. He doesn’t have a moustache any more.
Alice still loves Uncle Frank best but now she loves Da too.
Da, Mam and Alice have five lovely days together. Da carries Alice on his shoulders and they walk all the way round the town like that and Alice waves to everybody. Uncle Frank brings them a second-hand gramophone and Da puts on some music and dances with Alice round and round the house and out into the street while Mam laughs and laughs.
They take some stale crusts of bread up to the duck pond in the park but all the ducks have gone – someone’s had a nice roast for dinner, Mam says – so they sprinkle them for the sparrows instead.
On the way home, Da points out a large house with six chimneys and trees in the garden and tells Mam that one day they’ll live in it.
When I come back for good your Uncle Frank and I are going into business, he says. We’ve got big plans, we have. I’ll buy you a fur coat and a diamond ring. How would you like that?
Mam smiles and shakes her head, holding out her hand. That gold ring’s enough for me, she says. Just you come home, Jack, that’s all I want.
Then Alice has to go and sleep at Gran’s house. She doesn’t understand why and is naughty, kicking and screaming when Uncle Frank comes to collect her. Uncle Frank finds a whole cake of Fry’s chocolate cream in her coat pocket and tells her to be a good girl and give Da and Mam a couple of days on their own. Perhaps she could paint a picture for Da to take with him when he goes away.
The picture is on the back of an old piece of wallpaper and uses up most of her paints. It’s got Alice herself in it, holding hands with Mam and Da.
They all go, even Gran, to wave Da off at the station when he has to go back to the war. He shows Alice the special picture, rolled up carefully in his soldier’s pack.
A few months later Mam stops working at the factory and starts crying a lot.
‘How will we manage?’ she asks Gran over and over, but for once Gran has nothing to say. She keeps on knitting something small and white.
Alice spends Christmas Eve with Gran that year and has a tangerine, a whole packet of barley sugar and a threepenny bit in the sock Uncle Frank hung up for her by the fire. At breakfast Gran gives her a hat and mittens, knitted in navy blue wool she’s unravelled from an old jumper. Uncle Frank gives her a new paint box.
But the best present comes later when Uncle Frank takes her home. A lady Alice has never seen before meets them at the door. She’s wearing a white apron.
You must be Alice, she smiles. Come and see your mam. She has a surprise for you.
She leads Alice through to the bedroom where Mam is sitting up in bed and in her arms is a baby wrapped in a shawl. Mam draws the shawl back to show a little face, rather red and scrunched up. Alice isn’t sure what to make of it.
Then the baby opens his eyes and appears to look right at her and straightaway Alice knows that she loves him more than anyone else in the whole wide world.
‘Say hello to your baby brother,’ Mam says. ‘His name’s Charlie.’