Midnight. Josephine Cox

being a disturbance to anyone.

      A few moments later, when all were seated, Mr Howard asked Jack to tell him about himself. ‘Your background . . . where you were born, family – that sort of thing.’

      For years, Jack had made every effort to shut his past out, but now he cast his mind back. ‘Well, I’m an only child,’ he started. ‘I was lonely, I remember that.’

      ‘Was your relationship with your father a happy one? What I mean is, did you get on better with him than with your mother?’

      Jack took a moment to clarify his thoughts. ‘Sometimes, when she was in a bad mood, I was frightened of my mother. Oh, I’m not saying she beat me, because she never did. But she had such a quick temper, you see? My father was more gentle. Sometimes he took me to football matches – we supported Blackburn Rovers – and sometimes he took me fishing. He was a good man . . . a hard-working man.’

      For one fleeting moment, a deep sadness threatened to overwhelm him. ‘I was sent home from school one day. At that time I was coming up to my GCSEs. My mother was hysterical, so Eileen next door had come in and was sitting with her. She told me that my father had been taken to hospital, that he was hurt bad after being trapped in a fire at the factory where he worked. She said another man had died.’

      He paused before going on quietly, ‘Two days later, my father died too.’ He had not let himself think about all this in any detail for such a long time; it was painful talking about it now.

      ‘My mother cried a lot. She didn’t want me near her. It was as if she blamed me for what had happened. So Eileen took me in for a time. Her daughter, Libby was my best friend. After school, we went on long walks across the fields to Cherry Tree, where we would sit in the field and talk about things – Libby was a good listener. Sometimes if the weather was really hot, we’d paddle in the brook, and go home with wet feet.’

      The thought of her made him smile. ‘Libby wasn’t like the other kids at school. Unlike them, she never laughed at me or called me names. But she did not like my drawings. She said they frightened her and she didn’t want me to show them to her any more.’