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and further away. They talked about nothing else at school. Yes, they discussed jobs and career prospects, but behind it all was the greater knowledge that somehow the decline of the town was pulling them down with it, as if the town and its offspring were a single, inseparable unit.

    And as they came to consciousness, so did Mary come into womanhood. She sat in her silent room after school, sometimes toying with homework but more often just staring at the walls and at the posters pinned there, posters of the pop groups who had come to represent the now untenable dream. She cried for no apparent reason. She began to have nightmares, the gist of which would be forgotten on waking. She saw the day near when Tom would be leaving: 6 January 1969. It was so close.

    On Christmas morning Mary brushed out her long silver hair for some considerable time. She sat cross-legged on her bed with her mirror wedged in her lap, and watched the waves of static wafting strands around her as if she were sea-blown. A carol service was on the radio. Mary hummed along. She did not want to go downstairs because her father and mother would be there and last night her father had screamed at her mother and had slapped her. Mary had heard it through the bedroom floor. She could not face having to look at either of them or trying to speak to her father. Tom had been away all night at a friend's. He was home now. He was downstairs, where no one was speaking.
    The radio was loud in her room so that she would not hear the shouting, should there be any. This was the last Christmas before Tom left for Canada. She had looked at Canada in an atlas at school. It was huge, colossal really, and the towns and cities had good names. Some people there spoke French, but Tom could not. Why was he going to Canada when he could not speak French? It was far too late to put the point to him, so Mary brushed her hair and hummed carols instead.

    Her mother shouted up the stairwell, her voice neutral.
    Lunch was ready. Mary felt as if she had just eaten a plateful of toast, yet she had to go down. There was no excuse.

    She walked downstairs into silence. Her presents were the only ones left beneath the tree. Her father smoked in his chair. Tom, lying across the settee, was reading a book. Her mother could be heard singing softly in the kitchen. The large dining table had been ornately set. Mary drew out one of the chairs and sat down. There were six presents beneath the tree. There would be two from her mother and father, one from Tom, and three from her two aunts and one uncle.
    Her grandparents had died in the war. A whole generation had been erased.

    Her mother brought in a steaming tureen of soup. 'Here we are then,' she said, and Mary thought that the smile on her bruised face was the saddest thing she had ever had to bear.

    On Boxing Day, Mary's mother went to visit her sister in Leven, taking an overnight bag with her. Mary feigned illness and would not be persuaded to go. Tom had arranged to meet with some friends, as had Mary's father, so her mother left the house alone. The door clicked behind her.
    Mary did not expect to see her again. She saw it as her final leaving, and she did not blame her. When her mother returned the very next afternoon, no one but Mary was surprised.

    But by then she was too distraught to be glad. Two months later, the family had their first letter from Tom in Canada, and Mary told her mother that she thought she was pregnant.

    'Please don't tell Dad,' she said through her tears. Her mother remained silent for a long time.

    'I'm not going to ask who it was,' she said eventually. 'Just answer me this: can he marry you?' Mary screwed up her eyes and shook her head. Her mother sat examining her own hands. It was not an easy life. First her husband had taken to drink, then she had to watch her only son leave for a distant country, and now this. Her son and her daughter.
    She knew immediately when it had happened. Boxing Day.
    The