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hit the roof. But there was nothing that could be done about it; as Rose said to her husband Patrick, Colleen would have to marry Sidney Roberts or live the rest of her life with the stigma of being an unmarried mother. So they had galloped down the aisle and Allie had been born a scant six months later, surprisingly big and healthy for such a premature baby. Rose had never really forgiven Sid for making her daughter pregnant, but she’d long ago forgiven Colleen, whom she preferred to think had been bedazzled by Sid’s undeniablegood looks and charm. Not that there was much of either left now, in Rose’s opinion, though Colleen was always very loyal to Sid, and quick to defend him whenever things weren’t going well, which, as far as Rose could see, was nearly all of the time.
    ‘Take it with a grain of salt, Dad,’ Allie suggested. ‘She’s only trying to look out for us.’
    ‘She doesn’t need to,’ Sid said, looking up at Colleen. ‘We’re not doing too badly, are we, love?’
    Colleen smiled at him with real affection. ‘No, love, we’re not.’
    Allie felt a nice, round, warm feeling spread through her chest: she loved it when her parents were like this. Sometimes there were yelling matches and occasionally her mother threw the odd thing, and she knew she was the reason her parents had had to get married, because she’d sat down one day and worked out the dates, but she also knew that, no matter what went wrong, they really did love each other.
    Loud bickering from the back porch announced the arrival of Allie’s younger sisters Donna and Pauline—fifteen and fourteen, respectively, and both going on twenty-five.
    Donna came in first. Like her sisters, she had her mother’s pretty face and fair hair, matched by a set of brows that were currently almost touching in the middle, so deeply was she frowning.
    ‘Mum!’ she said as she threw her cardigan at a kitchen chair, taking no notice when it missed and landed on the floor, ‘Pauline says that sweater you’re knitting is for her!’
    ‘That’s right,’ Colleen said, rinsing a peeled potatounder the tap and dropping it into a pot on the stove. ‘It is. And it’s a jumper, not a sweater. Only Americans wear sweaters.’
    ‘Ha ha!’ Pauline taunted as she followed Donna inside. ‘I told you!’
    ‘But purple’s my favourite—it’s my signature colour!’ Donna complained.
    Colleen stared out of the kitchen window at the lemon tree on the back lawn. She really must get out there with some copper one of these days and spray it—there were rust spots all over the leaves. She sighed. Donna and Pauline had been fair little madams since Allie had been bringing home stories about the models at Dunbar & Jones’s fashion shows. If they didn’t give it a rest soon she’d give them signature colours, all right.
    ‘Mum? It’s my favourite colour,’ Donna whined again.
    ‘I heard you the first time, love. But you got the last thing I knitted.’ Colleen turned away from the window. ‘And where is it, that jumper? I haven’t seen it for months.’
    Donna went very quiet.
    ‘You’ve lost it, haven’t you?’ Colleen said. At the look on her daughter’s face, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Donna, do we look like we’re made of money? That was expensive wool!’
    Looking sheepish now, Donna muttered ‘Sorry, Mum’ and disappeared into the hall.
    Allie stood up. ‘Is there anything I can help with?’
    ‘Yes,’ Colleen said, ‘you can shake some sense into that girl’s head. Pauline, bring the washing in, please. And then take your sister and go and wait at the bus-stop for your nan.’
    ‘I’ll do that if you like,’ Allie offered, looking in herhandbag for her cigarettes—she’d have one while she was waiting. There was something she wanted to ask Nan before they got back to the house.
    At the bus-stop Allie sat down on a low wall and lit up. It wasn’t very ladylike, she knew, smoking on the street, but too bad. She