When Maureen was ten there was an episode of importance. The two mothers were in the room above Maureen's Shop and they were brushing their little girl's hair out. Shirley's mother said: 'Maureen could do really well for herself, Mrs Watson.' And Mrs Watson nodded, but sighed deeply. The sigh annoyed Maureen, because it contradicted the absolute certainty that she felt (it had been bred into her) about her future. Also because it had to do with the boring era which she remembered, or thought she did, as a tiger-striped movement of fire. Chance: Mrs Watsons sigh was like a prayer to the gods of Luck: it was the sigh of a small helpless thing being tossed about by big seas and gales. Maureen made a decision, there and then, that she had nothing in common with the little people who were prepared to be helpless and tossed about. For she was going to be quite different. She was already different. Not only The War but the shadows of war had long gone, except for talk in the newspapers which had nothing to do with her. The shops were full of everything. The Banners' sweets-tobacco-paper shop had just been done up; and Maureen's was short of nothing. Maureen and Shirley, two pretty little girls in smart mother-made dresses, were children of plenty, and knew it, because their parents kept saying (apparently they did not care how tedious they were): 'These kids don't lack for anything, do they? They don't know what it can be like, do they?' This, with the suggestion that they ought to be grateful for not lacking anything, always made the children sulky, and they went off to flirt their many-petticoated skirts where the neighbours could see them and pay them compliments.

Eleven years. Twelve years. Already Shirley had subsided into her role of pretty girl's plainer girl friend, although of course she was not plain at all. Fair girl, dark girl, and Maureen by mysterious birthright was the 'pretty one', and there was no doubt in either of their minds which girl the boys would try first for a date. Yet this balance was by no means as unfair as it seemed. Maureen, parrying and jesting on street corners, at bus stops, knew she was doing battle for two, because the boys she discarded Shirley got: Shirley got far more boys than she would have done without Maureen who, for her part, needed — more, bad to have — a foil. Her role demanded one.

They both left school at fifteen, Maureen to work in the shop. She was keeping her eyes open: her mother's phrase. She wore a slim white overall, pinned her fair curls up, was neat and pretty in her movements. She smiled calmly when customers said: 'My word, Mrs Watson, your Maureen's turned our, hasn't she?'

About that time there was a second moment of consciousness. Mrs Watson was finishing a new dress for Maureen, and the fitting was taking rather long. Maureen fidgeted and her mother said: Well, it's your capital, isn't it? You've got to see that, love.' And she added the deep unconscious sigh. Maureen said: Well don't go on about it, it's not very nice, is it?' And what she meant was, not that the idea was not very nice, but that she had gone beyond needing to be reminded about it; she was feeling the irritated embarrassment of a child when it is reminded to clean its teeth after this habit has become second nature. Mrs Watson saw and understood this, and sighed again; and this time it was the maternal sigh which means: Oh dear, you are growing up fast! 'Oh mum,' said Maureen, 'sometimes you just make me tired, you do really.