Doll bends over, checking a barrel; she got hips on her under that skirt, sturdy, bovine, though she’d kill him if he said as much. His cheek yearns for her lap, for her stroking hands, for her fantastically common reek of beer and ham and Parma Violets.

He fingers her stuff, her undies, a stocking. He winds it round his hand, tight silk, unwinds it, lays it back across the chair where it dangles like leg skin.

Clem ground out her cigarette and immediately wished she hadn’t. It had felt like something live she could hold onto

The infant’s eyes were as black as if night were trapped behind his lids, and when he opened them she feared she’d be consumed.

Walking back in the lamp-stained dark, the duckboards greasy and glittering with frost, she wanted to sing, she wanted to scream, she wanted to make love to him, she wanted to die.

And then came Mrs Fletcher, snapping her scissors, the soft scrunch of the blades through thick hanks, the gradual sensation of lightness. Now every scrap of hair that Powell had touched was gone.

Right on the dot, Ted waltzes in as if he owns the place. Vince looks up from the pump. Christ he’s got his ice-cream seller’s jacket on, straw hat, moustache gleaming like a pair of brass handles.

He frowned, pulled her roughly against him. She could feel the tickle of his chest hair against her cheek and his bristles on top of her head. She could feel the outraged beating of his heart.

And she comes, she actually bloody well comes, bustling down between the beds, bless her heart, in her best coat and vile black straw hat, more fit for a funeral than anything. He’ll get her another, whatever she wants, the best money can buy. He’s so pleased to see her he could nearly bloody cry.