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tap fiercely; he saw her drying-up cloth move towards her eyes. ‘Not now,’ she said several seconds later.
    ‘I don’t think I could stand it.’

Chapter 3
    POMEROY STREET,
CARDIFF, 1942
    Dom’s letter to Saba had arrived in the morning post. Reading it brought a flush of colour to her cheek. She remembered that boy, but not clearly.
    She’d been so wound up before the concert, terrified that she would fail, or be overwhelmed by the patients, and later so tremendously happy when it had gone well.
    But it did mean something – quite a lot, actually – that he had found the evening special too. She felt like dashing downstairs with the letter right away, forcing her family to read it – See, what I do means something. Don’t make me stop – but since no one in the house was properly talking to her, she put it in the drawer beside her bedside table. There was too much going on in her head to answer it.
    Her family were at war. Two weeks previously, a brown envelope had arrived for Saba with On Her Majesty’s Service written on it, and all of them hated her as a result of it. Inside was a letter from ENSA, the Entertainments National Service Association. A man called John Merrett had asked her to attend an audition at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on 17 March at 11.30. She was to take her music and dancing shoes. Her expenses would be paid.
    At that time she was living in the family’s three-bedroomed terraced house in Pomeroy Street, down at the docks, between the canal and the river, a few streets away from Tiger Bay. It was here, in an upstairs room of this cramped and cosy house, that Saba had shot into the world twenty-three years ago. She was three weeks early, red-faced and bellowing. ‘Little old leather-lungs right from the beginning,’ her mother had once said proudly.
    In peacetime she shared the house with her mother, Joyce, her little sister, Lou, and occasionally her father, Remzi, who was a ship’s engineer and often away at sea. And of course there was good old Tansu, her Turkish grandma, who’d been living with them for the past twenty years.
    Apart from Tan, asleep by the fire in the front room, she was alone in the house when the letter came. She tore the envelope open, read it in disbelief, and then got so excited she didn’t know what to do with herself. She raced upstairs, crashed into her small bedroom, raised her arms in exultation, gave a silent scream, sat down in front of her kidney-shaped dressing table and saw her shocked white face gazing back at her from three mirrors.
    Yah! Hallelujah! Saved! Mashallah! The wonderful thing had happened! She danced on her own on the bare floorboards, her body full of a savage joy. After months of performing in draughty factories and YMCAs for weary workers and troops, ENSA wanted her! In London! A place she’d never been before. Her first proper professional tour.
    She couldn’t wait to tell her mother, and paced all afternoon in an agony of suspense. Mum, who was working the day shift at Curran’s factory, and who’d been on at her to get a job there too, usually got home about five thirty. When Saba heard the click of the front door, she bounded downstairs two at a time, flung her arms around her and blurted out the news.
    Later, she realised that her timing was unusually off. Tea had to come before surprises. Her mother was highly strung, and, to say the least, unpredictable in her responses. Sometimes standing up for Saba, sometimes caving in, entirely depending on her husband’s moods . . . Or perhaps Saba should have told Tansu first. Tan, who had a theatrical flair for these moments, would have put it better.
    Her mother looked tired and plain in the ugly dungarees and turban she now wore for work. She took the letter from Saba’s hand and read it without a word, her mouth a sullen little slit. She stomped into the front room and took her shoes off, and snapped: ‘Why did you let the fire go out?’ as if this was just an