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chuck.’
    Much later that night, when she was curled up in the tiny truckle bed with Dolly clasped to her bosom and Ma Kettle snoring like an elephant in the big brass bedstead not more than a foot away, Biddy went over her day. It had been painful beyond measure to watch her mother’s coffin being slowly lowered into the impersonal earth at Toxteth Park cemetery. Then it had hurt to say goodbye to Mrs Kilbride and the kids. She had never been particularly happy in the scruffy, down-at-heel little house on Virginia Street, but at least Mam had been there and they had enjoyed some pleasant times, especially when Mam felt well and they had talked about her starting work again, moving to a betterneighbourhood, training Biddy up so she could be a saleslady in one of the big clothing shops.
    Still, girls do leave home at fourteen and go into service, Biddy told herself. Probably, if Mam hadn’t met my Da and fallen in love with him and fled over here to Liverpool, I’d have gone into service in Dublin round about now. And I’d have felt pretty lonely and lost in someone else’s house, too.
    But in service you had other servants. In service you were paid a wage, got time off, could go home sometimes, perhaps as often as once a week. You could save up, buy yourself the occasional treat, have a best friend to giggle with. Since her mother’s illness and her own employment by Ma Kettle, even friends from school had called less often, busy with their own lives and unable to spend their time waiting for Biddy either to finish work or finish nursing her Mam.
    If things were different I could get back with Kezzie and Maude and Ellen, Biddy thought hopelessly. But things aren’t different, and I’ll just have to put up with what I have got, for the time being. And besides, I did all right today, didn’t I? Old Ma Kettle was rocked back on her heels by me asking for more scouse, just like Oliver Twist in that book me and Mam read last year, but she gave me some, she shelled out. Perhaps, if I can keep it up, she won’t use me too badly, and I’ll like living here. Perhaps even the boys might not be too horrible, once I get to know them.
    One thing, you’ve got to stand up for yourself in the Kettle household, because if you don’t no one will, she thought, just before she went to sleep. I’ve got to be tough, like them, or they’ll flatten me.
    And presently she slept, to dream of putting a ha’penny on the tramlines so that it might be squashed penny-sized, only to find that the ha’penny had turned into Sister Eustacia, who had reproached her for doubling her income in so sneaky a fashion. And she had stood up to Sister Eustacia and told her about Ma weighing her thumbs and doing the kids out of the odd sweetie, and Ma had come surging out of the back room, saying, ‘No scouse for you, amn’t I goin’ to treat you like me own daughter, you serpent’s tooth?’
    After that, the dreams got odder and odder. Ma made her wear a pair of boy’s trousers and a boy’s shirt because she said clothes were always handed down in good, close, Catholic families and the trousers tripped her up when she was serving people and the shirt sleeves dangled in the toffee and got disgustingly sticky. And at intervals throughout the night the dream-Ma would shout, ‘No scouse for you, madam – amn’t I goin’ to treat you like me own daughter, you serpent’s tooth?’ and poor Biddy would think up clever arguments to get herself fed properly but they never worked. Either the table would turn into an elephant, trumpeting loudly, or it would tip over and run out of the room, or the food would simply disappear whilst Ma, with a big smile on her face, advised Biddy to fill up with bread ’n’ jam and whisked the bread into the fire and the jam into her apron pocket.
    When Biddy woke it was still dark, and the trumpeting elephant table was standing by her truckle bed. She gave a little squeak of fright and the table turned into Ma Kettle,