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his plump hand. 'I'll be straight wiv you, Anne. Both of us saw her as more than just a customer. Nuffin' improper, mind! Just maybe wishful thinkin'.'
    Anne felt a bubble of pleasure rise inside her.
    'Like I used to wish you was my Dad?'
    'Just like that, Anne.' George beamed down at her, his bulbous red nose and fat jolly face suddenly handsome. 'And now we got a crack at it, ain't we! So we'd better be feedin' the pair of you up and gettin' this place ship-shape for Amy when she comes 'ome!'

Chapter 2
    The ringing sound woke Anne. She leaned up on her elbows in the dark and listened.
    She found it hard to distinguish between the telephone and the front-door bell, as both were luxuries she hadn't encountered till arriving at George's house, but the continual ringing suggested this was the phone.
    'What time of night is this to bleedin' call?' George muttered as he padded barefoot down the stairs.
    George and Harry joked a great deal about being foster-parents, but Anne knew their humour was intended to hide how nervous they were. They wouldn't leave her or Paul alone in the house, not even for a moment, and they checked out visitors before opening the door. George thought she didn't notice the rigorous locking-up before bed, or that he had blocked up the letterbox.
    When Harry drove them to see their mother at the Middlesex hospital he was always on his guard. They were hurried into the car, after the road had been checked, shopping was done miles away and George kept telling them they weren't strong enough yet for school. But it was the absence of any mention of her father that convinced Anne they were hiding something. Bill MacDonald was a man everyone always talked about, even if only how drunk he'd been or who he'd thumped. Harry and George knew something, and they weren't telling!
    But despite this niggle of anxiety, the three weeks they'd been, in Bethnal Green with George had been the happiest time Anne remembered in her short life.
    Good food, warmth and the secure, calm atmosphere were a great part of it. Not a day passed without Anne noticing amazing improvements in Paul. He had put on weight, his bruises had faded, he was less nervous, sometimes he even managed to ask a question or comment on something of his own volition.
    Pleasing though Paul's happiness was, Anne's great delight was in suddenly finding herself able to look ahead. She had always been good at household chores; cleaning the cooker, scrubbing the floor and polishing furniture were second nature to her. But the challenge of turning George's house into a home appealed to her creative side.
    The stall's stock was now up in a spare room on the top floor, the car engine out in the back yard and the piles of shirts ironed and hung up in wardrobes. But while Harry and George were impressed by her housekeeping skills, they praised her talents at drawing and sewing still more.
    Harry bought her a box of expensive paints and George brought home remnants of material and even a wonderful teenage doll with long blonde hair, so she could make it clothes. Sitting at the table in the lounge armed with scissors, reels of cotton and scraps of lace, she could immerse herself in a fantasy world of high fashion.
    There was noise here like there was in Whitechapel, traffic at the front, trains at the back, but it was subdued, just a comfortable hum in the background. Beyond the net curtains she saw the trees, the strip of grass where old men sometimes sat in the sunshine to chat. Across the busy road was the park George called 'Barmy Park', named because the library had once been a lunatic asylum. St John's Church on the corner of Roman Road made her think of the palaces she used to build for Paul out of building bricks, a big, plain square church with only a small dome on top to give it a bit of dignity.
    'You could be a designer,' Harry said one day as he picked up her doll, now dressed as a bride. 'All that smart gear up in Regent Street starts off like this.'
    Her