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"When I leave," Sophie said, coming home from school, "I m going to have a boutique." Jansie, linking arms with her along the street; looked doubtful.

"Takes money, Soaf, something like that." "I'll find it," Sophie said, staring far down the street. "Take you a long time to save that much." "Well I'll be a manager then–yes, of course– to begin with. Till I've got enough. But anyway, I know just how it's all going to look."

"They wouldn't make you manager straight off, Soaf." "I'll be like Mary Quant," Sophie said. "I'll have the most amazing shop this city's ever seen." Jansie, knowing they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory, became melancholy. She wished Sophie wouldn't say these things

When they reached Sophie's street Jansie said, "It's only a few months away now, Soaf, you really should be sensible. They don't pay well for shop work, you know that, your dad would never allow it." "Or an actress. Now there's real money in that. Yes, and I could maybe have the boutique on the side. Actresses don't work full time, do they? Anyway, that or a fashion designer, you know – something a bit sophisticated."

And she turned in through the open street door leaving Jansie standing in the rain. "If ever I come into money I'll buy a boutique." "Huh - if you ever come into money..... if you ever come into money you'll buy us a blessed decent house to live in, thank you very much." Sophie's father was scooping shepherd's pie into his mouth as hard as he could go, his plump face still grimy and sweat-marked from the day.

"She thinks money grows on trees, don't she, Dad?' said little Derek, hanging on the back of his father's chair. Their mother sighed. Sophie watched her back stooped over the sink and wondered at the delicate bow which fastened her apron strings. The delicateseeming bow and the crooked back. The evening had already blacked in the windows and the small room was steamy from the stove and cluttered with the heavy-breathing man in his vest at the table and the dirty washing piled up in the corner. Sophie felt a tightening in her throat. She went to look for her brother Geoff.

He was kneeling on the floor in the next room tinkering with a part of his motorcycle over some newspaper spread on the carpet. He was three years out of school, an apprentice mechanic, travelling to his work each day to the far side of the city. He was almost grown up now, and she suspected areas of his life about which she knew nothing, about which he never spoke. He said little at all, ever, voluntarily. Words had to be prized out of him like stones out of the ground. And she was jealous of his silence. When he wasn't speaking it was as though he was away somewhere, out there in the world in those places she had never been.