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from Liverpool each night because the boats stopped sailing at midnight and he would be leaving for good in the morning. It appeared that when he said he was a manager he had failed to tell her that it was of a nightclub and that this was why he was so late getting home every night.
    When the front door closed behind him Jenny walked round the house, opening windows, letting in gusts of fresh air in an attempt to cleanse the place of the presence of both of the men. It was wonderful, she thought, to have her home back.
    As she stripped the beds and cleaned the rooms they’d been using she felt an overwhelming sense of freedom that they had both departed. It was such a relief not to have strangers there. If only she could turn the clock right back, she thought, and have Eddy back and Karen still a little girl and everything as it had been for so many years.
    She knew that was impossible and knew she had to devise some other way of finding the money to maintain her beloved home. Perhaps Karen had been right and she should try and find herself a job of some kind.

Seven
    Although she tried very hard Karen Langton found it difficult to settle in to her new surroundings and to adjust to living with Jimmy Martin.
    It was not only that the tiny flat in Dalrymple Street was claustrophobic after her home in Warren Point but her relationship with Jimmy was so different from what she had anticipated it would be. His whole manner had changed in every way since she had moved in and Karen found it very disturbing.
    He was moody; not only first thing in the morning but often for days at a time. The hugs, kisses and sweet talk with which he had charmed her and won her heart in the first place seemed to have vanished. He was curt, often disinterested in what she had to say and sometimes so downright rude and dismissive that she felt deeply hurt.
    Furthermore he was lazy and slovenly at home. He seemed to expect her to wait on him as well as to be responsible for all the cleaning and cooking. She was willing to do her fair share but the way he treated her made her feel like a drudge.
    All the romance and glamour seemed to have ebbed away and the old adage ‘he only wants you for one thing’ rang in her head when he made excessive sexual demands on her.
    She quite liked her new job although she found it was much harder work than she had expected. Her immediate boss, Jason White, who was in his early thirties, was rather foppish. He dressed in a very arty manner and had overlong black hair that he kept sweeping back from his brow in an affected manner that irritated her.
    He was the nephew of the owner of White Hart Publicity and he was both pedantic and demanding but Karen had to admire his artistic talents and his flair for dramatic presentations.
    Jason was an ideas man who left all the leg work to someone else and that, Karen discovered, was usually her. She did all the mundane hard work and Jason basked in all the glory.
    More and more Karen began to wonder if she had been rather hasty in her decision to change both her job and her home at the same time. Her job was nowhere near as glamorous as she had anticipated that it would be and her new home life was certainly disappointing.
    She wondered how her gran was managing without her and sometimes felt a little guilty at having left her to cope alone.
    For the first time in her life she realized what budgeting entailed. Jimmy didn’t pay anything towards their food, saying that since he paid the rent for the flat and also all the lighting and heating bills then he expected her to pay for everything else they needed.
    It had sounded ideal but she hadn’t realized that food cost as much as it did or that there would be all the other things she was expected to supply like toiletries for both of them and cleaning items.
    She had dreamed about all the new clothes she would buy and the trips to the hairdresser and perhaps even to a beauty parlour but found she couldn’t afford to do any of