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Perhaps it was the spring weather blowing in over the countryside beyond the garden fence, or the effect of being home once more, but Alice slowly cheered up. And she began to take an interest in Peter again, giving him a whole new list of books to get through.

One morning she came into the kitchen with her hands clasped and a smile on her face.

‘Buxton theatre's opened again,' she announced.

‘Oh aye,' said Maudey. ‘Maybe they'll open the Picture Palace up now. I'd love to see that film again, with Fred Astaire. He's got lovely feet.'

‘Well, yes, but the thing is, Peter, we're going to take you to see
Swan Lake
.'

‘If you like that sort of thing,' said Maudey, sounding a bit peeved that no one had asked her.

‘Obviously, it's only a provincial company, but it will be such a good experience for you. Have you ever seen a ballet before?'

Peter shook his head.

‘Well then. Splendid. We'll leave at seven.'

They sat in the stalls. Alice passed him a pair of tiny pearl binoculars so he could see the dancers' white powdered faces; although they were in fact close enough to hear the click, click of the satin shoes on the stage floor. He tried hard to look out for the things that the dancers were doing wrong, as Alice did, but to him it all seemed equally unlikely and wonderful: the sad girls dressed in white veils for skirts; the man who leapt as high as the music. After taking a long time to die the swan lay very still on the stage floor, and once they were sure she wasn't going to move again the audience burst into applause.

It was hard to imagine himself almost a year ago, that faraway summer when he had arrived at the Hanburys' and found them all in the garden, their quick banter and their easy ways with knowing all about how things were done in life. He was a good few inches taller now, shot up almost beyond recognition.

‘A right good-looking lad,' Maudey had declared, ‘and a good boy too,' as he helped out around the kitchen. ‘If I'd ever been blessed with a boy of my own, Peter, a son like you would have done me proud.'

Back then he hadn't yet started at the grammar. Now he was almost always top of the class there. He could conjugate French verbs. Knew pages of Latin words. He had been shown how to use a Bunsen burner. Admittedly he only went to school for half-days since the building was shared by an evacuated school from Salford, and three afternoons out of five they dug for victory in the school playing fields, rows of turnips and cabbages where there'd once been games of rugby. But he seemed to have travelled miles away from the Peter Donaghue with the unashamed Manchester accent and the shorn-off hair.

All through that first winter at the Hanburys' he'd longed and longed to be back with Ma and with Bill. When he'd gone home at Christmas Ma had been proud of him, and a little deferential, as if he were a too-bright lamp, showing up the shabbiness in the room. He saw the defects there now, the limitations in their lives, and there was no way to go back and undo that sadness.

He and Bill were too old to go out in the market square and collect beer bottle tops to fire at each other. Bill had a blue overall that he wore to the tool factory where he was now doing his apprenticeship. He came home and looked at an old newspaper while Peter sat and waited for him to speak. No sign of Dad. Finally Bill had shut the paper and said, ‘Shall us go then and get him home?' to Peter.

Peter had followed Bill though a wet sleet to the Queen Alexandra where the tall windows shone with light, frosted and etched with beautiful swirls and garlands. Once through the door they were embraced by a warm din of masculine noise; a smell of malt beer, of bitter tobacco and wet coats. Behind the mahogany serving bar mirrored shelves glinted with bottles and tipsy strands of Christmas tinsel; coloured paper chains hung from the ceiling. Dad had a pint and an audience, so it took them half an hour to get him to come home for Christmas dinner.

Ma, he saw, was thinner than ever, her face carved sharply by the thing that made her wheeze and have to sit down. He wanted to stay home and make sure she was all right. Cried when Kitty hugged him, said she'd take care of Ma for him. And Doris was getting married soon; he'd be home for the wedding, eh?

But once he was back with Maudey in the bright kitchen with the full pantry and the Christmas cake that she'd saved for him, back again in the Hanburys' world, then his life in 167 Albert Terrace had begun to fade into another world. When he talked about walking home after school he saw the Hanburys' house.

Summer came in and Alice was home once more. Her brothers were also back from boarding school and Peter was called on to make up sets for doubles. Proud to be able to return a ball, to own white shorts from his school PE kit, he carried the cotton bag with the lemon barley and the stack of Bakelite beakers. As they sat in the shade of sycamore trees, resting their backs against the wire netting fence after a fierce game, Alice's shins were bare in ankle socks and pumps. Wiping sweat from her top lip she said, ‘There's no reason why you shouldn't think of university one day, Peter. I mean why not? Honestly, you're getting such good exam results, better than these two stinkers ever got – and they'll go to university.'

‘Not me,' said Phillip. ‘I'm sticking with the army once I'm called up. Had enough of schoolrooms.'

‘At least Peter isn't a philistine. Imagine you're going to college, Peter. What would you study?'

‘Everything, miss. I want to know everything.'

Alice looked immensely pleased.

It was so hot that Alice begged Mr Hanbury to let her take the car and she drove the boys to a place in the Dove River where they could swim. Turquoise dragonflies hovered over the dark green water; long skeins of green weed flowed in the currents like a giant's hair. Alice stood at the edge of the water in a white bathing suit. She tucked her hair under a white bathing cap that made her look like an otter and adjusted the strap under her chin. Shivering, she walked into the water up to her waist and then let herself float out to a pool where the water eddied into a calm stillness. She flipped over like a fish.

Peter watched her white limbs disappear, then appear again, shivers running down his arms. He'd put on one of the boys' old costumes
but stayed paddling at the shallow edge, where the clear water ran over the pebbles, nothing but moving light and shadows.

Wearing thick bathing suits with straps that came over their shoulders, the boys ploughed in, churning up the water, splashing each other and Alice, sending showers of drops over Peter, making him risk going deeper to splash them back until he found he was managing a passable sort of doggy paddle, keeping afloat with them.

He didn't think he had ever had a more perfect day. When they got back to the cool of the house Peter headed for the kitchen to get a drink of water from the tap.

‘Letter for you, lad,' said Maudey, nodding at the kitchen table.

He saw his ma's neat copperplate handwriting on the front, the writing she'd won prizes for in school. His chest bumped with happiness. They'd not been able to afford for him to take the train back for Doris's wedding and sometimes, in his lonelier moments, he had felt a lowness of spirits, as if floating between worlds. At last here was a letter.

He took it up to his room, opened it to a chorus of sparrows chirping in the larch near the house. Ma was coming to see him; in a couple of weeks' time she'd be here. He almost bounced on the bed like a boy. He'd have so much to show her. And Maudey would magic up a cake and there'd be sandwiches with a lace cloth in the drawing room, and – a slight niggle in his stomach when he thought of Ma's best hat. It had been her best hat for a long time and was a bit defeated-looking. And there was the coat that had been in and out of the pawnshop. It drooped and had a big seam across the middle as if it had once been two different coats, the raggedy wide fur collar she wore for best, even in hot weather. No, she wouldn't wear the coat, surely not in this heat. She'd put on her dress with the brooch at the neck perhaps to visit the Hanburys. And what of the hanky that she always had to discreetly spit into after a coughing fit? Feeling disloyal he pushed those worries away.

He was going to show her all his exercise books upstairs, the writing almost as neat as hers now. When he'd told her at Christmas that he was doing well at the grammar she'd looked that proud and satisfied. Wet-eyed.

‘The teachers are a terror, I bet. I remember what it was like,' and she admitted that when she was a girl she could read Virgil in Latin, that she could write equations in chemistry. A far-off ghost of a smile on her face that was soon gone as Kitty screamed that the cat was clawing at the precious Christmas chicken.

Well, he'd get her a chicken from the farm, a right big one, like Maudey did for the Hanburys. You didn't always have to have the ration points. He'd pay for it with his potato-picking money that Maudey was keeping for him so one day he could get a bike. Ma could take the chicken home for Bill and for all of them. And for Dad.

When he'd told Dad he'd passed all his exams at the grammar, his dad's cloudy eyes had looked over Peter's head. In his worn suit, big over a caved-in chest, Dad had swelled up, stood higher, a man with no need to go to any grammar – and with no need for his son to look down on him – that was for sure.

A couple of weeks after the letter and everything was ready for Ma's visit. Maudey had baked a cake, done him proud. He ran home from school, burst into the kitchen, but it was Dad sitting at the kitchen table with Maudey, his trilby on the table. His dad was the last person he'd expected to see sitting there. He swelled with gladness, proud. His dad had travelled all the way out to see him.

‘Hello, Dad.'

‘Are you well there, Peter?'

Maudey glanced over at him. She looked worried, upset. Something wrong.

‘Grand I am, Dad. And yourself?'

His dad looked down. The kitchen door opened. It was Mr Hanbury. Dad got up, standing to attention. They shook hands for a long time.

‘I heard from Alice,' Mr Hanbury said. ‘I'm so sorry. Why don't you come through to the drawing room?'

Peter followed the men through to the big front room. In the daytime it had a cold feel, looking out onto the dull side gardens. The two men stood in front of the unlit fire and Mr Hanbury took out his gold cigarette case from the folds of his suit jacket. He offered one to Dad.

Dad looked small next to Mr Hanbury, and worn-down looking. His eyes always had a sunk-in look from the gas injury back in the war, and recently his jaw had shrunk after he'd had his teeth pulled. His suit sleeves moulded to the shape of his bent elbows; the brown cloth looked rusted in the daylight.

Mr Hanbury was elegant in navy cloth cut to fold neatly round his tall shape, his black hair shining like it had been done with boot blacking and given a good polish. But Dad stood tall, seemed unaware of being anything but Mr Hanbury's equal. Excited even, to be able to show how he could hold his own in a room like this, next to a Mr Hanbury.

‘I'm very sorry for your loss,' Mr Hanbury said. ‘Peter is taking it very manfully.'

‘I've yet to tell him the news, Mr Hanbury.' He turned to Peter. He swallowed and looked stricken. ‘Lad, I've something to tell you about your mother. She's in a better place now.'

‘You mean she's in the sanatorium again?'

‘No, lad, you're not listening to me. She's passed away, Peter. Your ma died last week.'

Mr Hanbury slipped out. Squeezed Peter's shoulder as he went.

Peter tried to make sense of it. Heard himself wail. There was
Maudey. She sat him in an armchair. He curled up and hid his face in his arm while he wept. Someone put brandy to his lips. Peter took a gulp at the hot medicinal taste, and it made him feel distant and empty and the room moved away. Maudey put a cool hand on his forehead, stroked his hair back. Dad stood by the fireplace and waited for Peter's weeping to slow to a hiccup. He rose up and down on his toes, looking around the room. Maudey creaked up off her knees. She said to come by the kitchen and she'd make them tea.