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Ann.’ Viv jumped off the table and came towards her. But at that moment the front door burst open and the girls ran in.
    â€˜Hello Auntie Ann.’ Rosie came up and hugged her.
    Ann pressed her face against Rosie’s cheek. Eight years old and she still smelt new and fragrant. Sweet, slow Rosie, whom she secretly loved the best, though she would never admit it to a soul. She turned to Daisy, and pulled something out of a carrier-bag. ‘It’s your turn this time, Daisy,’ she said, giving her the dress she had been sewing this past week. ‘I do hope it fits, you’re growing so big.’
    Daisy put on the dress; it was pink and frilly. She jumped up and down in front of the mirror.
    Viv inspected her daughter. ‘What a wonderful frock. You look like the heroine of a Georgette Heyer romance.’
    Stung, Ann said: ‘I do read other books, you know.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Not just those ones.’
    â€˜Just taking the piss.’
    Ann frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say that. Anyway, you read them too. Before you became the local intellectual.’
    â€˜Wasn’t much competition in Watford,’ laughed Viv. She looked around. ‘Once I believed in romance. When anything was possible. Before all this.’ She smiled. ‘Remember reading them under the bedclothes? Remember
Belle of the Ballet
?’
    â€˜Ah yes . . .’
    â€˜With her tip-tilted nose and light dusting of freckles . . .’
    Daisy said: ‘Mum, why can’t I do ballet?’
    â€˜Because you do dance.’
    â€˜I want to do ballet, in a ballet dress.’
    Viv said: ‘Ballet’s regressive.’
    â€˜What?’ Daisy climbed off the settee and wandered into the garden.
    Viv said to her sister: ‘Remember
Photo-Love
and
Valentine
? I loved Elvis because he was so oily and sexy.’
    Ann said: ‘I loved Cliff Richard.’
    â€˜That’s because you were nice. Nice girls loved Cliff.’
    â€˜Nice girls who knew how to sew.’
    They smiled.
    Ann went on: ‘Remember Dad caught us reading
Valentine
behind the shed?’
    â€˜He thought it was dirty and gave you a walloping.’
    â€˜Ah yes . . .’
    â€˜You always got the wallopings.’
    â€˜I was the oldest,’ said Ann.
    â€˜It wasn’t fair, picking on you. Dad never was fair.’
    Ann paused. ‘I didn’t mind.’
    â€˜I did.’
    â€˜You didn’t!’
    Viv paused. ‘Well, I do now.’
    There was a silence. Faintly, the girls’ voices came from the garden. Viv drained her wine. ‘It’s not fair.’
    â€˜What isn’t?’
    â€˜Life. He was right.’
    â€˜Fathers are supposed to be.’
    There was a silence. Ann couldn’t speak with the girls so near and the men soon returning. Besides, how could Viv help?
    In the next street the church bells started ringing. Ann laid the tea-towel back over the hamster’s cage. When she was younger she had had a hot, teenage love affair with God. None of her family had ever gone to church and so she had carried on her secret conversations in the dark. She had bargained into the blackness and prayed under the bedclothes. When she had had bad thoughts about Viv she had submitted to her ownpunishments, squeezing her belt knotches too tight. She had feared God with a passion so fierce it had made her dizzy, and she had starved herself to feel dizzier.
    The church bells rang and Ann reached into her carrier-bag and brought out the trifle. She had made it that morning, piping whorls of cream around the top and decorating it with cherries. When had she lost her faith? It seemed like yesterday. She put the trifle into the fridge for lunch and thought: once I believed in God. Now I believe in food.
    â€˜. . . And he comes panting through the snow,’ said Ken, ‘puffing and panting, and she opens the door and says, “Where’s the