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school. But at that stage I was still finding the grammar school bewildering: I hadn’t got used to changing for PE and doing my homework on time, and I dreaded maths lessons. ‘I’ll leave school when I’m fifteen,’ I said willingly. ‘Once I’m earning we’ll be all right for money.’
    â€˜Oo-oh – sometimes you talk real daft,’ Mum snapped, and she started banging plates about to demonstrate her aggravation.
    â€˜What’s wrong with that?’ I asked Dad.
    â€˜What good will it do?’ he said. ‘Use your sense, Janet. If you leave at fifteen with no qualifications you’ll be stuck here, same as we are. Education is your way out. You’re one of the lucky ones, you’ve got the chance of a lifetime. You must stay at school as long as you can, pass all your exams, go on to college. If you better yourself, you’ll be able to get a really good job. People with college degrees can get a thousand a year as soon as they start earning.’
    Mum stopped slapping the crockery. ‘Never!’ she said, thunderstruck.
    â€˜It’s right, I’ve seen adverts in the paper.’
    â€˜Well there must be a catch in it,’ Mum declared. ‘Who’d pay a fortune like that to beginners?’
    I was awed into doing some mental arithmetic. A thousand a year … that was twenty pounds a week! Nearly twice Dad’s wage, for a start. If my staying at school would make us rich like that I was all for it.
    â€˜In that case,’ I said generously, ‘I don’t mind putting up with things a bit longer. If you don’t mind, that is,’ I added, but it was too late. I’d seen their faces as they glanced at each other and for the first time I realized that they weren’t just my Dad and Mum, they were two separate people and they weren’t very happy either.
    â€˜Oh, we don’t mind. We’re used to putting up with things,’ Mum said, and her voice was as raw as a nettle. ‘We haven’t had much choice in our lives.’ Dad didn’t say anything, but he looked shrunken and bleak although the room was warm. I felt suffocatingly embarrassed.
    â€˜Can I have scrambled egg for breakfast in the morning, Mum?’
    â€˜No, you can’t,’ she snapped, ‘you’ll have a boiled egg as usual and like it.’ And things seemed back to normal, but it must have been then that I started to grow up.
    There isn’t any regular work for women in or near the village. We’re fourteen miles from Breckham Market, and the earliest bus, the one I took to school, is too late for the factories. So Mum’s work has always been outdoors, casual field work, on and off according to the season.
    She used to take me with her on the back of her bike when I was still too young for school. I can remember helping her pick strawberries and currants in summer, and getting told off for eating too many, and in autumn I used to huddle under a hedge while she lifted potatoes in wind and rain. Mum always grumbled that her back would break in the fields and at the end of every job she swore she’d never go again, but apart from needing the money she enjoyed the company of the other women. Despite her grumbles she always looked forward to the start of each season, setting off in her outsize jeans and sweater, wellies and a woolly hat, with a bag containing her plastic mac, sandwiches and thermos hanging from the handlebars of her old bike.
    But not long after I started at the grammar school, a rumour went round the village that a turkey-processing business was going to be set up on the old airfield a couple of miles away. Mum was really excited, thinking that she’d be able to get a regular job at last.
    There was an American Air Force base there when I was small. A left-over from the war, Dad said. I often saw the airmen driving jeeps through the village when I was on my way to or from school. At