…A few days earlier she'd called at the local fish and chip shop. The old Italian owner wrapped her order of four potato cakes into a white paper parcel. ‘I justa popped in a cuppla extra, love,’ he'd said, grinning at her muddle of toddlers.

As they walked they laughed and jumped as potato cake after potato cake was ceremoniously pulled from the paper parcel.

‘He might think we can't afford to feed you,’ she'd said.

‘No, Mummy. He's just being nice,’ Debbie replied…

…‘I can only stay for half an hour,’ she told Simon when they met down by the river, in the dark, hidden from the road by bushes.

‘Alan's at home is he?’ he asked, spreading a rug.

‘Yes. I told him I was going to the Milk Bar for cigarettes.’ She giggled merrily. ‘He said he can't be expected to mind the children after he's worked all day. He said I was a lazy, incompetent slut.’

‘Alan is so paranoid,’ Simon murmured, his voice warm with concern. ‘What did you do?’

‘I left quickly before he decided I couldn't go at all.’

They laughed and frolicked back up the hill through the bushes to their cars an hour later, exhillarated by their wickedness…