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there were those like Megan who were prepared to reach out to anyone who needed them, hoping that in so doing so they would, in some small way assuage their grief.
    Megan found enough love and understanding for everyone she came into contact with. Her children, her mother-and brother-in-law, her nieces and nephews, her lodgers, her friends, her neighbours – her generosity became a byword on the Graig and an object of Elizabeth’s scorn.
    When Caterina died after contracting pneumonia Elizabeth expected her children to stop visiting Leyshon Street, but if anything their visits became more frequent. It was as if Caterina’s death drew the children, Evan and Megan closer, and shut out Elizabeth all the more.
    Caterina had always been the one to contact Elizabeth, and invite her to all the family births, deaths, marriages and celebrations. After she died Megan never climbed the hill as far as Elizabeth’s house again, although she cleaned the Graig Hotel, which was practicality on the corner of Graig Avenue, six mornings a week, including, much to Elizabeth’s disgust – Sunday mornings.
    Bethan, like her brothers and sister learned early in life that if she wanted anything other than plain food and carbolic soap and water she would get it in Leyshon Street, not at home.
    After Caterina’s death Megan assumed the role of family confidante that had been Caterina’s. And it was Megan who presented Bethan with her first lipstick and pair of real silk stockings, on her all-important fourteenth birthday. Thrilled, Bethan had rushed home to show them off. Tight-lipped, Elizabeth took them from Bethan’s trembling hands and threw them into the kitchen stove.
    Bethan retreated sobbing to the bedroom she shared with Maud, and later, when Evan came home from work, he wormed what had happened out of her.
    He said nothing to either his wife or his daughter, but on pay day Elizabeth’s housekeeping was short by the amount he’d taken to replace Megan’s gifts. Elizabeth learned her lesson. From that day forward she confined her disapproval of Megan and her presents to verbal lashings, nothing more.
    Whenever Bethan, Maud or the boys returned from Megan’s with something in their hands, Elizabeth would enquire coldly if it had “been bought with Harry Griffiths’ money”.
    The children too learned their lesson. They hid the presents Megan gave them and ceased speaking about their aunt, their cousins and the visits they made to Leyshon Street in their mother’s presence.
    So Bethan and her brothers and sister grew up, unwilling participants in a conspiracy of silence.
    Bethan learned about subterfuge before she even went to school. Whenever she did anything she knew her mother would disapprove of she ran to Caterina and later to Megan who would make it come right. She knew she could count on her aunt and grandmother to mend her torn dresses or replace the pennies she lost on the way to the shops. They wiped her tears, and slipped her a few coins for treats and school outings when Elizabeth wouldn’t, and until Bethan left home at fourteen years and three months old to work as a skivvy in Llwynypia Hospital she never questioned how her Aunt Megan, a widow with two children of her own could afford to be so generous to her nieces and nephews.
    And even when she was old enough to look at Harry Griffiths and see the answer in his frequent visits, she couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn her aunt.
    She loved Megan far too much to do that.

Chapter Two
    ‘It’s ten minutes to six,’ Elizabeth said loudly, looking at the grease-stained face of the black kitchen clock that had been a wedding present from her Uncle John Joseph.
    ‘I know, Mam. I’m not meeting Laura until six.’ Bethan finished her tea and opened the cupboard set into the alcove between the range and tiny square of window that looked out on to the walled in back yard. She took her toothbrush from the cracked coronation mug that held all the family’s