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mother eagerly.
    ‘We’ll see,’ Vera said. It was so strange, suddenly having her mother say ‘yes’ to things or even ‘perhaps’, instead of ‘no’ as it had always been, so that Katie had given up asking.
    Next they went to the children’s hairdressers. Katie gasped with excitement as she went inside. She had never seen anything like it before! The children having their hair cut were seated on horses rather like the ones she had once seen on a carousel at the fair! It was nothing like the little barbers’ shops she saw in the streets near where they lived.
    ‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Can I go on one of those?’
    ‘Yes – just wait your turn,’ Vera said, with a polite nod to one of the hairdressers as they took their place in the queue. It felt almost as if they were play-acting at a life they didn’t really have.
    She loved sitting on the horse, pretending she was out for a ride, and a number of inches were shorn off her hair so that it only reached just below her shoulders.
    ‘That did need a tidy-up, didn’t it?’ the woman said. Then she tied it back with a pink ribbon, which looked lovely against her dark, wavy locks. Katie was ecstatic and bounced happily back to her mother.
    To finish this extraordinary afternoon, Vera took them both to Lewis’s tea room. Katie sat at the table, aware of her shorter hair, which also smelled envelopingly nice because the lady had sprayed something on it. Every so often she put her hand up and felt the ends of it, and the ribbon. She gazed round the tea room with its little tables with white cloths and comfortable chairs, at the waitresses in their neat black-and-white uniforms, offering cakes to the customers on three-tiered stands. Katie’s mouth was watering before the cakes got anywhere near them. There was piano music in the background, and there was nothing ugly or dirty to be seen. It was like being in heaven. If only things could always be like this!
    ‘I want to be a waitress when I grow up,’ she said passionately.
    Vera glanced at her with distaste, then away, trying to attract one of the waitresses’ attention. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Her voice was acid and forbidding. Katie shrank inside. Mother was back, the usual Mother who could turn on you in a second.
    But she did not feel crushed for long because one of these heavenly beings came to take their order, smiling prettily as they requested tea and a cake. The choice of cake was very difficult, but she picked a delicious pink sponge with cream in the middle and cherries on the top. Vera had a scone with jam and a tiny pot of whipped cream, and showed Katie how to eat daintily with a little cake fork, and they each wiped their mouths on the starched napkins.
    ‘I shan’t need any dinner,’ Katie said, scraping the last trace of cream from her plate with a sigh of satisfaction. She looked across the table at her mother and saw with a new shock how she looked as if she was in the right place, in a way she never did in their poor little house.
    ‘Mom?’ Vera didn’t correct her this time for not saying ‘Mother’. ‘Are we rich now?’
    A bitter expression passed across her mother’s face for a second. ‘No, dear. Not rich. But things will get better. We shan’t have to live in that slummy place for much longer.’
    After Christmas they moved house. Katie could feel her mother’s grim relief as they left Kenilworth Street behind. Patrick hired a van to take their belongings and got a friend to help him.
    ‘Are we going too?’ Katie asked. ‘Can I ride on top?’
    ‘No, you certainly can’t,’ Vera said sharply. ‘There’s not the room, and I’m not having us perched up with our chattels for all the neighbourhood to see. I’ll take you on the tram. Your uncle will go ahead of us.
    The only sad part was saying goodbye to Mrs Thomas, but both women promised that they would remain friends and visit each other. Mrs Thomas kissed Katie on the cheek and said, ‘Bye-bye, love. I’m