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to make a cake. You can take it to Ma. A big one, with fruit in it and all. They get given all this food through Mr Hanbury’s mates. She’ll do Ma the best cake ever. D’you think Ma’ll come and see us out here?’
    â€˜Reckon when she’s better, eh Peter. She’s none too clever at the moment. You got a letter from her?’
    â€˜And I wrote back.’
    â€˜You’ll be home at Christmas, see Ma then.’
    Peter rubbed at his eyes.
    â€˜Shall us go out? There’s tractor out there. I got to drive it the other day.’
    The right pecking order back in place, the boys left the underground cold of Bill’s room and headed off in the more forgiving warmth of the air outside.

    It was a few weeks later that he found Maudey and Mrs Hanbury at the kitchen table sorting through a pile of folded clothes. The clothes smelled new, dark red bands round the grey jersey and blazer. There was also a grey cap with the same red crest as the blazer pocket.
    â€˜Peter,’ Mrs Hanbury announced, ‘these are for you. We had your exam papers sent through from Manchester. Mr Hanbury had to put his foot down a little, and I don’t really know how he does these things, but you’ll start on Monday at Buxton Grammar school.’
    He had to try the uniform on for size. When Maudey saw him she was a little bit tearful. She put her hands against her doughy cheeks and said he looked that grand.
    Mrs Hanbury led him to the large mirror in the hallway. In it was a boy he didn’t recognise. Gone was the usual prison cut. He had a fringe, a golden brown colour, a face sleek from good food and good air, a grey shirt and claret tie under a tailored blazer.
    On the other side of the glass was the kind of boy who might, if he worked hard – worked really, really hard – grow up to become good enough to be part of Alice’s world.

CHAPTER 9
    Fourwinds, 1981
    Sarah awoke in the dark with a gasp and threw back the sheet that had tightened round her shoulders. She waited for the dream to drain from the room. Her heart was thumping so hard she could feel the skin at the base of her throat vibrating.
    She reached for the water, the shine of the moonlight on the glass. A white pill still lay beside it on the side table. She hadn’t swallowed it. She hadn’t wanted to be trapped in a dream with no way of waking herself out of it. She drank some of the water, tried saying Nicky’s name in the darkness.
    Nothing. No sound. Only the pain in her throat.
    But it wasn’t meant to be like this. She’d worked so hard to steer her life away into a new world, just her and Nicky.
    When she first met Nicky she’d never liked red roses, sentimental songs crooned by pop stars like Englebert Humperdink. She distrusted lace and frills, hated anything labelled romantic. Holding hands, staring into each other’s eyes, wasn’t it all a manipulation to an end?
    But Nicky had arrived one day and suddenly she wanted to believe.
    At the end of the second year at university they bought InterRail tickets and travelled through Europe. They spent the summer wandering through a blur of different landscapes and medieval cities, hand in hand, eating bread and apples or whatever was cheap. They slept sometimes in hostels, mostly on trains, long nights in the clackingrail carriages, always the same bubble of suspended sleep, waking in the dark to see various strangers who lay along the seats breathing and snoring, bringing whiffs of fried chips, hair oil, of citrus and aftershave. But sooner or later the others would be gone. The constant was the small world that they carried between them, always moving towards a new place that seemed to have been created with the moment of their arrival.
    In France, after Albi and Carcassone, they headed towards Bordeaux and found work on a vineyard, pruning the unneeded shoots and leaves from the vines so the grapes would warm in the sun and swell.