about 8 am on Christmas morning he would arrive for breakfast and the giving of presents, as always. By about 10 am when they all arrived together, my grandmother, my two aunts and a pseudo-aunt Miss Phillips, known as Phil, Aunt Edith’s best friend, he was well established as part of the household.

Our mother, helped by the five of us children, would have spent weeks making everything, the cakes, puddings, mince pies, turkey stuffing, bread sauce... and so on. The gigantic turkey would be in the oven – had been since about seven o’ clock – the present wrapping-paper would have been tidied away, the Christmas tree would be looking its best and we were all clean and tidy.

She, henceforward to be known as “Spikey” as she so much disliked her two given names – Marjorie and Doris – had explained to us all that it wouldn’t be kind to upset our grandmother and aunts by letting them guess that our father didn’t live there anymore. So, after a magnificent Christmas dinner, we entertained our guests, played quietly, or read our new books in the first floor drawing room while our father spent the afternoon in the basement kitchen doing the washing up for twelve all alone. This he insisted on. He didn’t like either of his sisters, and his mother didn’t know he smoked and wasn’t teetotal – and this gave him the chance to smoke his pipe in peace.

So we had to listen to long lectures on what a wonderful husband and father we had, and make polite conversation. At about four o’clock the Christmas cake was produced, tea was served. Then they all went off home – and ten minutes later my father was out of the door to rejoin Mrs Parker and family, and we could start to enjoy our real family Christmas.

Earlier that year my mother had taken me aside and shyly broached the subject of Peter. She didn’t want me to make the same mistake that she had – marry too young. If we really loved one another, and if I was very careful not to get pregnant she advised me to sleep with him (gulp) rather than marry too soon. I didn’t want to spoil this magnificent gesture by telling her we had been for the last two years, so I accepted her advice gracefully and gratefully. Now she moved out of her bedroom – and her double bed – for us. What other mother would have done that in 1938?

So now, on Monday morning, Peter followed my father (hereinafter The Old Man) on a second 108 bus through the tunnel. He was taken straight to a classroom full of fourteen- to fifteen-year-old boys and girls, and left there. These were streetwise East London teenagers – and they made rings round him!