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cupboard.’
    As sheets and towels were folded away Annie chattered inconsequentially about Friday’s activities while for a moment Helen continued to gaze out of the window. Her mother paused, hands on hips. ‘You’ve not heard a word I’ve been saying.’
    Helen relaxed. It was the second time that day she had been caught daydreaming. ‘I was watching Mrs Williams, Mum,’ she explained. ‘She seems so settled, like she’s been in her kitchen a century and will always be here. Yet she was born in a Welsh village.’
    ‘Here’s not a bad place to be,’ Annie countered. ‘You could do far worse. Liverpool people – Scousers – have some fine qualities. Even the goyim .’
    ‘Oh, I know. Nowhere else are people as warm, as friendly, as kind-hearted. Nowhere else do citizens have the same sense of humour, the same cheeky way with words, the same wisdom. Isn’t that right?’ Her mother looked puzzled: Helen was teasing. The girl continued, waving her arms as if on a television show, ‘Scousers have a keen sense of balance; in particular they know when to work and when to play. It is held to be wrong to work a moment beyond absolute necessity. Oh, quite.’
    ‘That’s true,’ Annie said, a little uncertainly.
    ‘The trouble is,’ Helen continued, her brow furrowed in best Cliff Michelmore style, ‘outside,these sensible attitudes are misrepresented. Scousers are regarded as a bit of a joke. Their rich accent, thick as soup in a ladle, is a source of mockery. Their attitudes and drinking habits are held up to scrutiny. Their preference for football over hard graft is inexplicably seen as a fault, not as a mark in their favour.’
    Annie shrugged and folded the tea towels. ‘So stay put. Everything is familiar, everybody talks the same. Nobody’ll laugh at you here.’
    It dawned on Helen that two kinds of restrictions faced her: being Jewish and coming from a working-class background in Liverpool. Two systems, each elaborate, complete and consistent, separable yet interlinked; two thickly woven blankets intended to protect her. Yet the overall effect was of suffocation.
    If Brenda and Meg were correct a third limitation existed. Should she want her own life it’d be much harder as a girl . She hadn’t given the question much attention; these were obstacles she had tended to take for granted. Girls were not barred entirely: they could try for Oxford, with its thirty colleges for men and only five for women. Cambridge was worse – only three took women. Even Liverpool University would accept far more men than women entrants and set secret quotas to ensure that outcome. But that was a big improvement on times when women couldn’t be admitted as undergraduates at all.
    So far Helen had regarded it as a matter of ensuring she at any rate was good enough to surmount the barriers. That the existence of the barriers was wrong in principle she knew, but ignored. Hence her preference for science. However tough it might be for a northern grammar-school girl to gain entry to a top university to read chemistry, it’d be ten times harder in English and nigh impossible in politics or history: unless one’s education to date had been paid for, and Daddy was a baronet.
    She laughed softly. Annie stopped and looked at her, the wayward one. Helen knew her mother found her a mystery: the element of distance between them was increasing.
    ‘So?’ her mother demanded defensively. ‘What did I say that was so funny?’
    ‘No, it wasn’t you, Mum. I was thinking how much easier it’d be to take the next steps if my father were a lord or a baronet. Sir Daniel.’
    ‘Well, he’s not. Nor am I Lady Majinsky, or Lady Muck. You shouldn’t go round wanting what you can’t have, my girl.’
    Yet Helen continued to smile, if ruefully. As her mother left, arms emptied, the girl picked up a file, then rose and closed the curtains.

Chapter Two
Friday
    Annie gazed dubiously at her daughter. ‘I’m not sure you should wear