“Oh, she’s a foul-mouthed woman,” said Jenny of Mrs Nixon. “She may well talk about God’s holy house, she had. It’s first time she’s set foot in it, ever since she dropped off from being converted. She’s a devil and she always was one. Can’t you remember how she treated Bob’s children, mother, when we lived down in the buildings? I can remember when I was a little girl she used to bathe them in the yard, in the cold, so that they shouldn’t splash the house. She’d half kill them if they made a mark on the floor, and the language she’d use! And one Saturday I can remember Garry, that was Bob’s own girl, she ran off when her stepmother was going to bathe her, ran off without a rag of clothes on – can you remember, mother? And she hid in Smedley’s closes – it was the time of mowing-grass – and nobody could find her….