‘You should have seen this silly little kid I met,’ he must have said. ‘Thought she was grown up, but didn’t have a clue.’

He might have telephoned to see how she was, but he didn’t.

She could have screamed. How could she make him fall in love with her if he wasn’t there?

For lack of anything better to do, she continued going out with the kids in the gang, although after Andrew their conversation sounded juvenile, and their concerns meaningless. The boys talked about the girls, the girls sighed over pop stars and made eyes at the boys. The talk was mildly indecent in an ignorant sort of way.

Then Jack Smith appeared among them. He was a motor mechanic, brashly handsome, and twenty-one. He fixed on Ellie as the best-looking girl in town, and his admiration, following Andrew’s departure, warmed her.

‘A smasher, that’s what you are,’ he told her one night when they were all sitting at a table outside a pub. ‘Bet you could have any feller you wanted.’

‘She could,’ Grace agreed. ‘You should have seen her at our birthday party. They were all over her. Even Andrew.’

‘No, he wasn’t,’ Ellie’s honesty compelled her to say. ‘He was saving me from the others.’

‘Oh, go on! What happened when he got you alone? You’ve never told.’

‘And I’m never going to.’

There were knowing cries of ‘Ooh!’

‘Who is this Andrew?’ Jack demanded.

‘My snooty elder brother,’ Grace said. ‘He carried Ellie out of the party thrown over his shoulder, like a caveman.’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Ellie corrected. ‘He just lifted me off the floor a bit.’

‘But he’d have liked to throw you over his shoulder, wouldn’t he?’

Ellie would have given a lot to know the answer to that question herself.

‘Bet he fancies you really,’ Grace persisted.

‘Don’t think so,’ Ellie said, clinging onto truthfulness with a touch of desperation. It was hard because her pride was involved. ‘Don’t forget about Lilian.’