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right.
    Neighbours looked out of doors at us. A woman said, ‘Thought you was only getting one.’
    ‘They was on special offer,’ said our man.
    ‘They looked too good to leave behind,’ said his wife.
    He grabbed my hair. ‘This yere’s Terry, the uppity one, and’ – he patted Jack on the back – ‘Jack, my namesake, is the nice one.’
    She was in quickly again. ‘Leave them alone, Jack. They must be tired and hungry.’ And she ushered us in.
    We entered and stared in wonder at a shining black range with a cat curled beside it; at a canary in a cage; at a green velvet tablecloth; at a sideboard on which sat a little brass dustpan-and-crumbs brush; at a shapeless sofa; at oil lamps – no electricity here; at two First World War shells in their cases, over six inches tall, standing on either side of the clock on the mantelpiece. They took our excited attention, beating even the cat and the canary, with their soldered-on Army badges that had three feathers and ‘ Ich dien ’ on a scroll. The evening sun lit the room in nearly horizontal shafts full of dust; the room seemed packed with things and smelled of coal smoke and cooking.
    But the glory came last: outside, past the hens in their run, right behind the wash-house, tucked down in a cutting and breathtakingly revealed, was the main London to Penzance railway line with Doublebois station practically below us, its goods yard and sidings a couple of hundred yards down-line beyond a road bridge at the far end of the station. In the short time before we went to bed – and even after – the rural silence of Doublebois was occasionally shattered as an express train roared by a few yards below us, steam and smoke belching over the cottages. Local trains chuffed. In the mornings goods engines shunted and banged and clattered, shouts echoed, the arms of signals clanked from danger, to caution, to go, and bells in the signal box announced the up-train to Plymouth and the down to Truro and Falmouth. We two railway children couldn’t have invented, couldn’t have dreamed of arriving in such a place. Even our address, cumbersome but utterly satisfying, was: ‘ 7 Railway Cottages, Doublebois, Dobwalls, near Liskeard, Cornwall.’

C hapter T hree
    The tiny front hall, where we were installed on a borrowed mattress on the floor, was a narrow passage that led to the front door, which was the ‘back’ door and never used. Everybody who entered Railway Cottages, except strangers, did so via the Court. They ignored the row of front gardens with their little gates, came down the Court and rapped on the back door which led straight into the back parlour or kitchen, the centre of the world in each cottage. If a stranger entered the gardens, walked the length of the terrace and banged on the front door, he was shouted at through the locks and bolts to come round the back, which was always open.
    In the privacy of our mini-domain we stared at Mum’s postcard by candlelight – a first for us – and considered our code. Jack held the pencil. ‘How many kisses shall we put?’
    I had no doubts. ‘I vote three.’
    ‘Hmm. I’m not sure.’
    ‘Come on yere, you two. What’s all this? Up-a-dando, into bed.’
    Suddenly our new – surrogate – mother was with us. Jack slipped the postcard under his pillow – too late; she had seen but she said nothing. I think I remember her putting us to bed that first night, at once making us feel at home, secure. But perhaps my memory is playing me false and I am running many bedtimes into one because sometimes we are in the hall on the floor (where we were occasionally put when visitors stayed) and sometimes we are upstairs in what became our room. However, whichever place it was, there was always her warmth, her smiling good humour, her tact with two children who were not her own, just the presence of her. ‘Come on, then. Who’s going at which end?’
    I grabbed the corner to snuggle into. But Jack was doubtful.
    ‘Will there