Easter came and went. Peter planted out his sweet peas. He was now able to leave his bike at Graham’s house rather than in the hedge and we were already eating our earliest vegetables. The roof of the house and the stairs were in.

As the months went slowly by I grew large, and larger. Often in January, February and March I had made the builders’ tea to save them the trouble. Now in May, June, July and August they made me tea and watched my progress with paternal eyes. They were all local men and had played in the empty mill as boys or, if old enough, as some were, had played round the working mill before the war. They must have thought us very strange. The Campbells had kept themselves to themselves with (now) four children and their art and also being Roman Catholic. So as far as Kirton was concerned we were the first incomers and they couldn’t make us out. There I was, walking around in bare feet – cycling up to the village to shop and queuing with other village women on Wednesdays and Saturdays at the mobile butcher’s van – but as I rode I would be reading a book propped open in my bicycle basket – and we didn’t mix with the local gentry but we didn’t talk Suffolk.

As summer and the baby drew nearer I decided to cut down the officers-for-the-use-of mattress to fit the baby’s cot. Peter had to stay at school that evening for a parents’ meeting... so I put a stew on the slow oil cooker and started work on the floor, with difficulty as it was not very easy to reach over my bump even that early. It took me at least a couple of hours to make the alteration, but I stuck at it. At last it was done. Triumphantly I stood up, stretched, and turned round. The whole of the part of the room near the door was black! Everything was black! The kettle was black! The white enamel bowl was black! A whole tray of our eggs, carefully numbered, all had black caps on! I had left the wick on the oil stove turned up just too high and it had been smoking all that time – greasy black smoke. I suppose I hadn’t smelt it because my nose was near the floor. The stew was fine, except for the lid which was on tight.

Wearily I filled the kettle from the outside tap and set it on the primus to boil. That done, I was able to wash the enamel bowl and the kettle – refill and boil up again. Bit by bit, using all the soda and soap we had, I cleaned down the black walls to their now habitual whitewash – the black furniture to its usual brown – and lovingly washed and dried each egg, piling them up in a now clean enamel bowl.

Peter and Bob had waited at school after the meeting until they could get a lift home, so it was eleven before they turned up. Peter was greeted by a very tired and bedraggled pregnant wife and the lingering smell of paraffin smoke. It could have been worse, I suppose.