EIGHT

‘What’s that? You after paying the next six weeks up front?’

‘What you on about?’ Edie whipped back the three banknotes she’d been holding out.

Jimmy had been hanging about in the background, hands in pockets, dog-end dangling from his lips, leaving Edie to do the necessary with Podge. The rent collector had just been emerging from a house in Campbell Road when they’d crossed paths. The sight of him wobbling towards them had made Jimmy again cuss under his breath. He’d been hoping that Podge might have given up trying to get into his prim stepdaughter’s knickers and instead gone off for a feed. Now that hope was dashed. He’d been counting on returning the three pounds he’d borrowed by Friday dinnertime. If he was late, he knew Lenny would be round like a shot to collect the money.

‘You trying to be funny?’ Edie accused Podge. ‘Pay up front, indeed! Just mark off what we owe in the book and don’t forget neither that I give you five bob earlier.’

‘Yer daughter’s paid up,’ Podge muttered, shoving past her on his way to the next doorway.

Jimmy’s feigned nonchalance collapsed; he exchanged a startled look with Edie. Shock and revulsion deepened the lines in Edie’s face; Jimmy looked decidedly thoughtful.

‘What d’you mean, me daughter’s paid up?’ Edie charged after Podge. ‘You wanted two pound nine shillin’. She never had all of that, I know.’

‘She had a five-pound note,’ Podge informed. He swung about to taunt nastily, ‘Wanna see it?’ He dragged a note out of his leather pouch and waved it, then nodded at the cash in Edie’s hand: ‘You can still give me that on account ’n’ all, if you like.’ He was still feeling narked at failing to bed her daughter. Nobody around these parts – especially not young women living with family – had that sort of cash to hand. After she’d sent him packing, he’d stomped down the stairs wondering where the little scrubber might have got it …

Edie gawped at the notes gripped in her fingers; slowly it dawned on her she had three pounds going spare. The miracle was soon whipped away. Jimmy, having silently come up beside her, snatched the cash and was loping up the street with it before she could react.

Now that the money was back in his hands, Jimmy was determined to put it to the use for which it had been intended without further ado. He’d borrowed off Len so he could set Nellie up. He hadn’t told his pal the truth of the matter, of course. Neither had he got around to telling Nellie he was going to be looking after her again. But he knew she’d agree without much persuading. She looked to be close to rock bottom, living hand to mouth and in need of a bit of geeing up.

Jimmy planned to rent a cheap room for her down Finsbury Park way. If he could keep her off the gin and smarten her up a bit, perhaps get her to lose a bit of flab, he reckoned she’d manage to pull in a decent bit of money for both of them. She wasn’t that old – early forties, he guessed – but she looked a decade more because she’d let herself go.

At the back of his mind niggled a thought and he tucked it away for later consideration. His stepdaughter had hidden away a five-pound note and he wanted to know how she’d managed to get that sort of cash in the first place.

Edie was pondering the same thing as she went up the stairs.

‘Where d’you get five pounds from?’ she barked at Faye before she was properly in the front room.

‘Saved it.’

‘Saved five pound from your wages?’ Edie sounded incredulous. ‘Only one way I know gels get that sort of money, ’n’ it’s off men with one thing on their minds.’

‘I saved it.’ Faye kept her eyes on the newspaper on the table. She turned over a page. Her mother might have hit the nail on the head. She had got the money off a man with one thing on his mind. What her mother didn’t know, and neither did she, was whether at some time he’d turn as callous as his father and call in the debt.

‘Well, you can give over the change.’

‘Why should I? It’s mine.’

‘’Cos if you had that sort of money you should’ve kept it, not given it to Podge.’

‘And done what?’ Faye asked quietly. ‘Did you think I’d invite that creep in to settle the rent and stop us getting evicted?’

‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve dropped your drawers, would it, miss?’ Edie hissed. ‘’Least this time it’d be for a bleedin’ good reason. And now you’ve got five-pound notes to give away, I ain’t sure it was the only time, neither, that you’ve misbehaved.’ Edie pressed her lips together. She regretted letting loose her tongue. Had she not been seething mad at allowing Jimmy to escape with the money, she probably wouldn’t have been so spiteful. The toerag had no doubt taken the money back to his son to pay for old furniture, leaving them with nothing for their tea. Even the drop of milk left in the bottle had gone sour.

Faye blinked at her mother in shock. She hadn’t been expecting that to be thrown at her when she’d just done them all a favour by paying off the rent arrears. Of course, she’d known her mother would demand an explanation for how she came to manage it. She’d prayed that Podge might be gone from the road when Edie returned. Then her mother would just think she’d scraped together the two pounds nine shillings. But even having that sum would have taken some explaining.

She’d been sitting with Adam, waiting for Edie to return so they could get tea ready. Now she closed the paper and stood up. Grabbing her jacket from where it had been hooked on the back of the door, she shoved her arms into it.

‘Don’t want tea,’ she muttered. ‘I’m going out.’

‘Wouldn’t get no tea, anyhow,’ Edie shouted. ‘Ain’t nuthin’ to have, is there, unless you get to the shop ’n’ buy us all a bit of bread ’n’ marge. You’ve got enough change outta that fiver, I take it?’ she added sarcastically.

Faye stopped in the doorway, her face flushing angrily. ‘And I take it you didn’t find Jimmy?’ she stormed. ‘Or if you did, he’s sent you packing with nothing, as usual. What a surprise!’

‘Don’t you use that tone with me! He wouldn’t ever have got his foot in me door at all if it hadn’t been fer you!’ Edie bawled. ‘If we’d stuck where we was in Erith instead of going to Dartford, we wouldn’t never have come into contact with Jimmy Wild.’

‘You’ve had plenty of time since to chuck him out!’ Faye raged back.

Adam started to grizzle and suck his thumb. He was young enough to still be sensitive to angry voices. Michael was used to his mother and sister rowing about Jimmy and the lack of food and cash, but since they’d arrived in London their arguments had got much worse. He came in from the back room, where he’d been lounging on the bed waiting for something to eat, and asked wearily, ‘We getting any tea, or not?’

‘Not unless your sister buys us something from the shop. I give over all wot I had to Podge Peters, she knows that. She saw me give him me last two half-crowns.’

Michael stared at Faye. ‘I’ll run up the shop, if you like,’ he offered hopefully. He was hungry. He’d eaten nothing since his free school dinner, and that hadn’t been much: just thin soup and a wedge of bread.

Faye felt in her pocket for the few coins she’d put there earlier. The notes she’d got in change had gone straight back in their hiding place in the curtain. But now her mother knew about her nest egg, and Jimmy was sure to find out too, sooner or later, they’d never leave off till she’d put it all in the kitty. In fact, her mother would probably start searching for it the moment Faye went out the door. And if it were discovered, Jimmy would bully Edie until he had charge of it. Then he’d be the only one to benefit from what remained of his son’s generosity. She’d sooner return the money than let Jimmy get his filthy fingers on it.

‘I borrowed it,’ Faye told her mother as she buttoned her coat. ‘If you must know, I borrowed the money ’cos I’m sick of living in this dump with that lazy pig you’re too weak to stand up to. I’m going to get enough together to get me own place.’ She sighed. ‘To save you the bother of searching for the notes I got in change, I can tell you now I’ve got them in me pocket and I’m giving them right back where I got them from. I’d sooner that than let Jimmy have the money.’

‘We getting any tea or not?’ Michael sounded increasingly pessimistic.

Faye pulled two silver shillings from her pocket and handed them to her brother. Then she went and picked up Adam and rocked him to and fro on her hip until he stopped crying.

‘Don’t give it back, dear,’ Edie wheedled. Her eyelashes batted rapidly; she was tearfully aware that her daughter might indeed be het up enough to return what she’d borrowed. ‘Sorry about what I said … it’s just … you know how things are …’

‘Yeah, I know all right,’ Faye said bitterly. She dropped a kiss on Adam’s silky curls then followed Michael towards the door.

‘You got more’n enough there to get four stale loaves and marge and jam and milk and tea,’ Edie instructed Michael, pointing a finger at him. ‘And don’t you let that old Smithie give you no brown loaves, neither, or you’ll be takin’ ’em straight back. If he’s got any broken biscuits going, we’ll have a bag or two of them ’n’ all. Then bring us back all the change.’

Faye turned in the opposite direction to Michael. Although there were several shops dotted along Campbell Road, Michael had gone, as usual to Smithie’s, the closest. She walked aimlessly towards Lennox Road, instinctively starting for her place of work even though the bakery was shut and dusk had long since fallen. She’d sooner be out in Campbell Road at night when the decrepit tenements that flanked the pavements were just shadows. But even though the extent of the street’s decay was less evident after dark, the stench of it wasn’t; after months of living in this slum, the mingling of damp and ordure still made Faye wrinkle her nose in disgust whenever she passed a particularly foul overflowing privy. ‘How d’you find Campbell Road from Kent, dear?’ one of Mr Travis’s customers had asked her not long after she’d arrived. ‘Just follow your nose,’ had been Mr Travis’s sour response.

Campbell Road was slashed in half by Paddington Street and on one corner stood a kip-house. Two fellows were lounging against the wall outside, and Faye could see the glow of their cigarettes and hear a rumble of conversation. They turned to boldly eye her up and down as she drew level, so she crossed the road and speeded up her pace to make it seem she had somewhere to go and wasn’t aimlessly strolling. She dug her hands into her pockets and wondered whether to pop in the shop and buy Adam and Michael some liquorice before going home again. But the thought of returning was too depressing. She nodded at Beattie Evans, who’d just come out of the shop with a bag swinging in one hand. They both jumped as a man roared, but on turning in the direction of the noise they realised neither of them had started him off. Behind a grimy sheet that served as a curtain at the window of a nearby house, two silhouetted figures, one male, one female, were rigidly inclining towards one another. The woman suddenly tottered out of sight, having taken a blow. Beattie shook her head and raised her eyebrows at Faye before hurrying off towards home. Faye proceeded quickly in the opposite direction.

Little illumination came from the interiors of the houses, even though many windows had no covering strung across them at all. Most people who needed to inhabit a room here were reluctant to shell out for lamp fuel or an endless supply of candles. Instead they passed dreary evenings in muted light. Faye understood why so many of the inhabitants, unable to endure the grim boredom a moment longer, preferred to spend their evenings lingering over a cup of tea in a cafe, or supping a half of stout in one of the local pubs. The stark reality of life in The Bunk, now she was part of it, had softened her opinion of such people. Most, like her own unlucky family, were not wastrels and didn’t deserve their fate. Jimmy Wild, on the other hand, was a wastrel. The knowledge that they were involved with such a man burned like acid in her guts.

She felt the lump in her throat thickening until a sob burst through it. She hadn’t felt as low as this since the day they’d turned up in this dump. The five-pound note that Robert Wild had given her had symbolised her hope and determination and her future. She’d been sure that, so long as she kept it whole, safely and secretly tucked away, she’d manage to add to it and build her better life.

Having turned the corner into Lennox Road she walked on towards Stroud Green. She had taken a circuitous route to Travis’s Bakery in Blackstock Road. In the mornings she’d take the quickest way, but she’d been anxious to avoid following her brother towards Seven Sisters Road, fearing his questions about how she’d managed to come by a five-pound note.

A couple of young fellows whistled and shouted at her from the opposite pavement. She recognised one of them as a youth Michael had been hanging around with, but she ignored them. It was inevitable that a lone woman out after dark would arouse unwanted attention, and she knew she ought to turn around but instead she put her head down and strode on, aware of hunger gnawing her belly. Bread and marge and broken biscuits didn’t amount to much of a tea but it was better than nothing. She’d not eaten since midday, when Mr Travis had let her have a hot sausage roll, just out of the oven. She’d had to gobble it up quickly too, burning her mouth in the process, and with just a tepid cup of tea to wash it down because he’d cut her break to a few minutes this week.

For the last few weeks her boss had been busy baking for a wedding. Today he had been putting the final touches to a beautiful two-tier cake. He certainly knew how to do fancy icing and had let her try her hand at it. He’d not been pleased with her few stars and had impatiently scraped them away, clucking his tongue, before sending her back to supervise the shop. She’d been run off her feet serving alone for most of the day. Her friend Marge had called in sick earlier in the week and Faye reckoned she was about to jack it in. Marge had said she was tempted to go and work in the laundry. The old miser paid her so little Marge reckoned she might be quids in up to her armpits in dirty washing. The thought that dirty washing might one day be her fate made the lump in Faye’s chest tighten and her eyes sting.

She’d had hopes of getting a good job. She’d dreamed of training as a clerk or secretary and working in an office in the City. She was bright; the teachers at her old school in Kent had told her that. But she’d missed a lot of schooling, looking after Michael when he was little so her widowed mother could work and keep them. When her mother remarried she’d been ten but, nice as he was, her stepfather had never had much money because he got little work due to his ill health. He’d been gassed in the war and suffered something awful from shortness of breath. As soon as she was old enough to leave school, Faye had been forced to get the first job offered to her: scullery maid in a big house. It had been the worst mistake of her life. Though her mother blamed her for what had followed, it had been Edie who’d forced her to take up the position …

The familiar clatter of the bell on the bakery door interrupted her thoughts. She jerked up her head, frowning and squinting into the dusk. Mr Travis was never usually this late going home; sometimes he followed her out of the door at six o’clock. She watched as the gas lamp burning at the kerb illuminated his dumpy figure emerging into the street, followed by another man whom she also recognised. The sight of his lean profile made a bittersweet ache clutch at her stomach.

Faye’s step faltered as she recalled a time, months ago now, when she’d overheard a brief conversation between Mr Travis and Robert Wild. She never had found out what that was all about.

Robert had seen her and, dismissing her boss with a nod and brief handshake, he approached her at a leisurely pace. Mr Travis looked flustered, but he raised his hat to her before striding off in the opposite direction.

‘Where you headed?’

‘Nowhere. What were you doing in there with him at this time of night?’ As soon as the words were out, Faye realised how impertinent she’d been. Whatever business her boss had with Robert Wild was between them and nothing to do with her. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I shouldn’t have asked … it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘’S’all right,’ Robert said, pulling out a packet of Weights. He lit one and took a drag, careful to send smoke from the corner of his mouth, away from her. ‘Travis took a loan from me, that’s all. He’d sooner we did business when the shop’s shut.’

Faye transferred her gaze to the disappearing figure of her boss. ‘You’re a moneylender?’

‘Amongst other things.’ His tone sounded sour as usual. He shot her a look. ‘It wasn’t a loan I gave you, don’t worry.’

‘I’m not,’ Faye said, and gave a mirthless little laugh. ‘Too late if you want it back now, anyhow.’ It was a wistful mutter to the night and she hoped he’d not heard it. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have told me about your business with me boss. It’s confidential, between the two of you, isn’t it,’ she blurted, hoping to distract him. He looked thoughtful, as though he’d guessed what had happened at home to make her aimlessly trudge the streets after dark.

‘Yeah, it’s confidential,’ he finally said. ‘But I trust you not to blab my business about. Would you?’

She shook her head quickly and to avoid his eye looked at the packet of cigarettes in his hand. ‘Aren’t you going to offer me one?’

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘How d’you know whether I do or don’t?’ she returned sharply.

‘Brothers just know these things about their sisters,’ he intoned drily.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she mumbled.

‘What’s ridiculous about it?’

She made a bored huffing sound and made to step away, but he caught her arm, pulled her back, and crowded her against the shop window, barring her escape with an arm planted each side of her. ‘Why’s it ridiculous, Faye?’

She gazed up into his fierce, black eyes, the funny feeling in her guts increasing. ‘Because if I really considered Jimmy Wild to be my father … even my stepfather … I’d run in front of your car again and hope you’d knock me down this time, that’s why. My mum and your dad aren’t married. I’m not your sister, or anything else. I’m nothing to do with any of you Wilds, thank God! I don’t want to know any of you.’

‘Yet you don’t mind your brothers being my stepbrothers.’

She yanked at one of the arms imprisoning her. He flexed muscle, keeping her where she was. ‘So I’m good enough to know them, but not to know you. Why’s that?’

Faye flung herself back against the glass and glared at him. ‘Because if they end up living round here … perhaps never getting away from this horrible dump … they’ll need looking after,’ she burst out. ‘I can’t get enough together to take them with me straight away. They’ll have to stay, and you’ll have to see they’re all right until I’ve got enough for all of us, ’cos if it’s left to my mum, God knows what’ll happen to them. She can’t even get a farthing out of Jimmy. All she gets out of him is lies and punches to shut her up.’

Tears of exasperation glittered in her eyes and she tossed her head in temper. She hadn’t wanted to let him know that her mother was a shameful, weak woman who’d let his parasite of a father get the better of her. A couple of times Faye had tried to intervene when Jimmy had been looming over her cowed, crying mother. But Edie had rounded on her, bawling at her to mind her own business. And so that was what Faye had done. She’d seen the panic in her mother’s eyes and suspected that, in her own way, she was trying to protect them all. But she blamed her mother for letting the vile bully live with them in the first place, so her sympathy was thin. It was wearing thinner still with every day that passed.

The thought of going away and leaving Adam behind had been eating at her insides for months. She knew that she’d have to go alone at first. It was an impossible fantasy to suppose she’d be able to get the boys through school and keep the three of them housed and fed on her wages. If she were lucky enough to be taken on in an office where they’d train her, she’d earn very little to start with.

Rob had watched the searing emotions tautening and shaping her profile. Now he dropped his arms to his sides and flicked his cigarette butt to the ground. ‘They’re nothing to me,’ he said, and strolled off to where he’d parked his car at the kerb.

He got in but didn’t drive off and she saw the red dot of another cigarette lit in the dark interior. Faye started back the way she’d come. Before she’d made a few yards her steps were faltering. She went back and glared at the car, trying to subdue her pride and go over and get in. She knew that was what he was waiting there for. He was expecting her to back down. She shuffled agitatedly on the spot, hating him for what he was doing, making her humble herself and plead with him to look after the two people she cared most about. But there was nobody else to ask, except him. Finally she sped over and yanked open the door.

‘Satisfied?’ she snapped as she tumbled into the seat.

He looked at her and smiled slowly; it turned into a hoarse, scathing laugh. ‘Yeah … ’course. Everything’s all right now.’ He crashed the car into gear and it lurched forward.

‘Where we going?’

‘Fuck knows!’ He swerved his head aside. ‘Yeah, I know, filthy mouth.’

‘At least you could apologise.’

‘Sorry.’

‘As though you meant it.’

‘Don’t push your luck.’

Faye swung her face and stared into the night. There’d been no humour in his tone, although she’d tried to ease the tension between them by teasingly reprimanding him. ‘I want you to look out for Michael in particular. I think he’s been getting into trouble with some local boys. My mum doesn’t know about this, but the other day he came in with cigarettes in his pocket. He must have stolen them, ’cos he’s not got the money to buy any. He hid them behind the wardrobe. He probably thought I hadn’t seen them …’ Her breathless voice tailed away and she frowned at his reflection in the glass. He continued smoking and steering as though he’d not even heard her. Frustration and anxiety bubbled in her chest until finally she could stand it no longer.

‘You said you’d help me get away from here!’ she burst out, and in exasperation her small fist punched his hand as it rested idle on the gear stick. ‘You said, last time we spoke, that you’d give me more money if I wanted. You can keep your money – just help them. That’s all I want.’

He whipped into a side street and came to such an abrupt stop she nearly shot off her seat.

‘What about what I want?’

Faye flicked her chin from fingers that had just jerked it towards him.

‘What else did I say?’ he asked, staring straight ahead.

‘I don’t know,’ Faye lied. ‘Can’t remember every little thing, can I, just the important bits.’

‘Yeah … that’s what I remember: the important bits. I said now you know where I live, come and see me.’

She felt her face heating and was glad of the darkness hiding her flushed complexion. She’d never been back to his house. She knew quite well what had prompted his invitation and the idea of it frightened her. ‘Well, I’ve been busy. I’m seeing you now, aren’t I?’

‘I reckon it’s time for cards on the table,’ Robert said quietly, drumming the pack of Weights on the steering wheel.

‘I’ve put mine on the table from the start,’ Faye passionately insisted. ‘I let you know straight away I hated it here … hated your father. I didn’t ask you to help me, you offered. It’s you being awkward, not me. If you’ve said things you don’t mean, offered me money you don’t want me to have, you’ve only to say. I’m not bothered if we never see each other again.’

‘Yeah, I know, that’s the problem, because I definitely want to see a lot more of you. But you already know that, don’t you.’

‘I’m not going to sleep with you.’

It was as if her words had exploded the tension that had been building between them from the first day they’d met. There was a long moment of silence before Rob spoke again.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not getting married … not for a long time.’

‘Well, that’s a relief, neither am I. I don’t want you to marry me, just to sleep with me.’

‘I know that.’

‘Now you’ve lost me.’

Faye swung her face to his, her eyes large and bright in her white complexion. ‘And what about children?’

‘I don’t want any yet.’

‘Neither did I … yet,’ Faye whispered.

Despite the shadows striping his features she could tell he was frowning, though she was unable to read his eyes. Then when he reached for her, dragged up her chin, she didn’t need to look at him to realise he knew. A moment later he’d let her go and was searching again with shaking hands for his cigarettes.

He’d hoped, at first, she wasn’t a virgin. They were bloody hard work and not usually worth the effort. From the start, something in her defiance and knowing ways had encouraged him to think she might have had a sweetheart in Kent who’d broken her in. She’d understood immediately why he was interested in her, but the longer she held back the more frustrated he’d become. He knew he wasn’t bad looking and he kept himself trim and well groomed. Women around here always gave him the come-on. He never paid for sex; not openly, anyhow. In a roundabout way it cost him, but he’d no objection to shelling out for clothes, or dinners, or unpaid rent for women he’d fancied. He’d never let any of them move in with him, despite having implied to Faye that he had. Yet he’d have moved her in a long while ago, if she’d have come. Now he felt cheated; but he wasn’t sure why. Then a nauseating possibility occurred to him and drove every other thought from his mind.

‘Jimmy?’

Faye blinked in confusion; inwardly she was shocked to the core that she’d told him – a virtual stranger and Jimmy Wild’s son – her precious secret. The significance behind his barked demand suddenly hit home, making bile rise in her throat. ‘No! He’s never touched me. God, no!’

‘Someone back in Kent?’ He extended the hand holding the cigarettes. ‘Go on, take one. I bet you smoke, too, don’t you.’

Hurt by his callous amusement, she knocked away his hand, scattering the contents of the pack on the floor. ‘I don’t smoke.’

‘Who was it?’

Her lips clamped together and for a moment she remained undecided whether to reveal anything else; then it seemed pointless not to. ‘My boss’s son. I worked as a maid in a house … it was my first job. I’d only been there a short while when he told me he’d fallen in love with me and wanted to marry me when I was old enough.’ Her fingers, held in her lap, clenched tighter. ‘I was fourteen, and he didn’t, of course … love me or want to marry me.’ She snapped back her head. ‘He was a bit like you, only younger and fair. But he was arrogant and had money and was nice and charming – till he couldn’t get his own way.’

‘Did he rape you?’

‘Don’t think so …’ She turned her head and looked out into blackness. ‘He said I’d led him on, saying I loved him and letting him kiss me … He probably thought I knew what he was doing to me …’

‘You mean you didn’t know?’

‘I’m not talking about it any more,’ Faye said shrilly. ‘Don’t ask …’

‘Does Jimmy know about Adam?’

It was the first time he’d used her son’s name and hearing it shattered her determination to tell him nothing else. Words started to spill out of her as though a dam inside her had broken. ‘My mum promised me she’d never tell him. I made her promise not to tell anyone. Your father thinks Adam is Edie’s. Everyone thinks that, even Michael. Anyhow, even if I hadn’t asked her to keep quiet, she wouldn’t ever say anything different ’cos she’s too ashamed … more ashamed than I am.’ Again she entwined her stiff fingers in her lap. ‘My stepdad … my proper stepdad, a nice man he was,’ she added wistfully, ‘he’d got gassed in the war so wasn’t ever very well and they weren’t married long. But at least he came back from France … not like my real dad. My dad didn’t even come home.’ She bit her lip to stop it trembling. ‘My stepdad passed away six months before Adam was born. He never knew I was pregnant. Nor did my mum, at the time. I didn’t show till almost the end.’ Her voice tailed off, then sprang into life again. ‘I thought she’d kill me the day I told her. She packed everything up and moved us to a different part of Kent, just so the old gossips in our neighbourhood couldn’t start talking about us. By the time we arrived in Dartford, Mum had just been widowed again and she pretended the new baby was hers. Nobody thought any different. But she was so ashamed of me. She kept reminding me I was lucky she hadn’t chucked me out on the streets. I know I was lucky too. Our neighbours in Kent disowned their daughter when she fell pregnant. She was their only child …’ Pulling herself together, she finished on a defiant note: ‘That’s it, and I don’t want anyone to know.’

In the heavy silence that followed, she sensed he was demanding an explanation as to why she’d told him in that case.

‘I wish I hadn’t told you.’ She stared through the car window. ‘But … perhaps in a way I trust you, I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because I know you sometimes trust me and that’s why you told me about lending my boss money. It’s the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘It’s nothing like it.’ His eyes slammed on hers and when he next spoke his voice sounded flat. ‘Believe me, you’ll know what’s happening to you this time. And if you fall again, I’ll see you all right. You don’t need to worry that I’d leave you in the lurch.’

‘I’ve said I’m not getting married for a long while.’

‘And I’ve said neither am I. There’s ways and means of preventing it happening. I’ll do my bit. But if you’re unlucky and don’t want to keep the kid this time, then there’s an answer to that too.’

Their eyes held for a long moment.

‘Like what?’

‘Like doctors who don’t mind doing a bit of moonlighting on the side. I’m not some tight-fisted git who’ll send you to a backstreet abortionist, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

Spontaneously Faye let fly with a small hand. Although he ducked, her blow made contact and was hefty enough to send his head sideways. The sound of her strike seemed to reverberate for a long while, longer than it took for him to jerk his head around. She shrank back from that slit-eyed stare, tensing and wondering whether he would hit her back. She’d yet to find out just how much like his father he was. When he seemed about to move, she struck out again, before his hand had travelled an inch, battering against his arm to keep him at bay. Finally, exhausted, she forced out an answer: ‘Abortionists don’t worry me ’cos I won’t ever need one. But thanks anyway,’ she added in a voice of shaky sarcasm. She scrambled out of the car, leaving the door open, and raced away, not looking back.