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was getting himself into, Megan stuck to shandy, and even then she sat out a couple of rounds. There were over a dozen pubs either on or just off the Graig hill, and William had a pint in every one. Before he’d married Megan he’d been capable of drinking almost any man in Pontypridd under the table and walking a straight line home afterwards.
    What he hadn’t taken into account was his lack of practice at sinking pints since his marriage. When money was tight, the man’s beer was generally the first thing to go, and Evan had warned him, ‘The price of getting a woman into your bed is every coin in your pocket.’
    William was an inch or two shorter than Evan, but he was still a big man, and worried about getting him home Megan suggested that they catch the second house in the New Theatre – there at least he wouldn’t be able to drink any more.
    As it turned out, William didn’t need much persuading. He was having difficulty standing upright, let alone walking, and he loved the music hall. In his genial, euphoric state he treated himself and Megan to one shilling and three penny seats in the stalls. It was an unprecedented extravagance that changed his life.
    If he’d bought his usual sixpenny gallery seats he wouldn’t have been able to reach the stage as easily as he did.
    The musical acts were good - very good. There was a ventriloquist, an American Jazz band, and an extremely attractive blonde soprano who burst into rousing choruses of patriotic songs.
    Unfortunately for William, and a good ten per cent of the men in the audience, she was joined on stage by a recruiting sergeant, who beckoned them forward. Mesmerised by the blonde, and singing at the top of his voice, William took up the invitation. Happy, drunk and on stage for the first time in his life, he signed the paper that the recruiting sergeant thrust under his nose and found himself an unwilling conscript in Kitchener’s New Army.
    Megan cried, but her tears softened nothing but her cheeks. William was shipped out that same night. She received a couple of abject, apologetic letters then a postcard emblazoned with a beautiful embroidered bluebird, holding an improbably coloured flower in its beak and a banner proclaiming “A Kiss from France”.
    A week later an official War Office telegram was delivered to her door in Leyshon Street.
    Regret to Inform you · Pte William Powell killed in action.
    His commanding officer wrote to her, a nice enough note that told her little about William’s life in the army or the manner of his death. Six lonely, miserable months later she gave birth to William’s daughter. She named her Diana after a character in one of Marie Corelli’s novels that she’d borrowed from Pontypridd Lending Library. Megan wasn’t one to break under grief. She had two children and a war widow’s pension that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the mortgage. Ever practical, she asked for, and got, a job scrubbing out the local pub in the early morning. But even that wasn’t enough, so she put two beds in the front parlour, and took in lodgers.
    It wasn’t easy to work even part-time with little ones to care for and Caterina used Megan’s plight as an excuse to leave Graig Avenue and move into Leyshon Street.
    Evan paid another visit to the bank manager. He took out a third mortgage on the house, this time for the maximum that the manager wood allow, and insisted on giving his mother every pound that he’d raised.
    Elizabeth was devastated and not only financially. Not realising how much she’d come to rely on her mother-in-law’s assistance with her children, she’d barely tolerated Caterina’s presence whilst they’d lived together, but after Caterina left, she felt her loss keenly. That, coupled with the crippling increase in the mortgage repayments, gave her yet another reason to feel rejected and ill used by Evan’s family.
    Bethan was six, Haydn five, Eddie two and Maud a baby when their grandmother moved into their