Au Revoir Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Sagas; 20th Century Romance; World War II

Synopsis

A gripping Second World War novel, from the bestselling author of NOTHING LASTS FOREVER and THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL. Liverpool, 1937. Jessica is married to Bertie, a mean, patronising man who she has stayed with purely for the sake of her two young children. To make up for the love and passion that is missing from her life, she spends the occasional afternoon at the local cinema, lost in romantic films. But when an unexpected glass of champagne is offered to her in a Liverpool hotel, the consequences turn out to be shattering. When Bertie discovers his wife's deceit, he is ruthless in his revenge. He sells their house and disappears with her beloved children, leaving Jessica devastated and alone. Then she is asked to visit Paris and help an old friend and her small daughters return to Liverpool before the onset of the war. But Jessica finds herself stranded in Paris under German occupation. With new friends and a small family to care for, she must find the courage that she never knew she possessed...

Release date: February 17, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 346

Sample

Liverpool

June 1937

Jessica’s mother boasted that, at the age of forty-nine, she could still turn a man’s head. ‘I wonder if they will still turn
when I’m fifty,’ she would then say with a coy smile, as if, when the clock struck midnight on her birthday, her lovely face
would melt into wrinkles, her startlingly blue eyes fade, and her hair turn grey (an impossibility as it had been grey for
several years but dyed a pretty golden blonde). ‘I’ll become an old woman overnight.’


‘Never!’ the friends would gasp – it would have been rude not to and so deny that Ethel Farley had the gift of eternal youth.
It was the reason why so many of her friends were male and so few female, the latter unprepared to worship at the foot of
her shrine.


Earlier that morning, Ethel had married Tom McGrath, a well-known, Liverpool-based barrister, whose sometimes notorious cases
were featured in the national press. Tom hadn’t stopped to worship, but had swept Ethel off her feet at their first meeting.
This time it was she who was doing the worshipping, having fallen madly and genuinely in love for the first time in her life.


‘I think your stepfather is adorable,’ said Jessica’s cousin, Lydia, who was sitting next to her at the wedding breakfast.

‘He looks like a gypsy.’ Jessica didn’t like her mother’s second husband and resented him being referred to as any sort of
father. He was too dark, too foreign-looking, his hair too thick and curly, his sideboards too long. She considered him rather menacing. Nor did she like the idea of him replacing
her real father, who had died five years ago and to whom she had been devoted.


‘It’s his Irish blood. He’s a Celt, not a gypsy. The Celts have been in Ireland since 350BC.’ Lydia seemed to know a bit about everything. As girls, she and Jessica had attended the same convent school and been in
the same class. Lydia had usually been top in most subjects, whereas Jessica had only been good at Art and English – English
Literature that was, not grammar. She had left at sixteen, but Lydia had stayed on, gone to university, and become a school
teacher.


Jessica said, ‘My real father was Irish and he wasn’t dark like that.’

‘He wasn’t a Celt, that’s why, just plain, ordinary Irish.’

The meal was being held in a private room in a small, hideously expensive hotel called The Temple, which was tucked like a
secret behind Liverpool Town Hall. Anonymous outside, it was exotic, outlandish even, inside. Lydia added to her reputation
of knowing everything by telling Jessica it was a place where well-off people conducted affairs of the heart and men picked
up attractive women who were in actual fact high-class prostitutes. Parties were held there that no respectable woman would
be seen dead at. ‘Though it would be interesting to attend one,’ Lydia said thoughtfully, a glint in her eye.


Thirty-three guests had been invited to the wedding, including Tom’s twin daughters by his first wife, now sadly deceased,
and their husbands, his brother and his brother’s wife, and half a dozen other people whose names and relationships to each
other Jessica couldn’t remember. Also present was Monsignor Rafferty, who had married the couple and was sitting next to the
bride.


On her mother’s side there was her brother, Uncle Fred, and his wife, Mildred, who were Lydia’s parents, and their son, Peter. Bertie, Jessica’s husband, was sitting on her other side, and next to him was Gladys, her paternal grandmother,
whom she loved dearly. Various unmarried cousins were present, two widowed great-aunts and, last but not least, Ida Collins,
Jessica’s mother-in-law, whom she loathed. Ida had inveigled an invitation to the wedding, though she had no right to be there.


‘She’s not a relative of my mother’s,’ Jessica had complained hotly when Bertie requested she obtain a wedding invitation
for Ida.


‘She is through you,’ Bertie had pointed out.

Jessica hid a shudder of revulsion. ‘Not a blood relative.’ She’d stopped arguing before Bertie demanded rather than requested
an invitation. He always won arguments, wearing her down with the weight of his logic, particularly if they concerned his
mother.


They were having breakfast in what was called the ‘Indian Room’. On the red, silk-covered walls hung brass swords in jewelled
scabbards, carved wooden masks, hideously painted, and loops of coloured rope with little brass bells attached. There were
no windows visible. The wooden floor was polished to the colour of old blood. She thought it was almost certainly the room
where the unusual parties were held.


The best man, Eddie McGrath, the bridegroom’s brother, stood to make a speech. He tapped his spoon against a champagne glass,
making a pleasing, mellow sound, and the guests fell silent.


Jokes were made, stories told of Tom when he was a child, then a young man, back in dear old Ireland, the family history relayed
in Eddie’s gravelly voice with its strong accent. He was older, smaller and narrower than Tom, his features not quite so refined,
as if his mother had given birth to him before bringing forth a much-improved version in Tom. As it was, the effort had killed
her.


The McGrath brothers came from poor farming stock. They’d pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The motherless boys had
been raised by their grandmother, who washed and sewed into the night to pay school fees so her grandsons received a good
education. Eddie had worked hard, but Tom had worked harder.


‘I paid her back as well as I could,’ Eddie said, smiling with a mixture of humility and pride, ‘but our Tom here, well, he
paid our granny back in spades. Me, I became a mere office Johnny, but Tom turned out to be one of the most famous lawyers
in the British Isles.’


Everybody clapped apart from the bride, who picked up the groom’s hand and laid it against her lightly powdered, subtly rouged
cheek. Jessica considered it an overly sentimental gesture on the part of her mother, a touch embarrassing, but everyone else
breathed, ‘Aaah!’ – apart from Ida Collins, who looked sour. Seeing this, Jessica added her own loud ‘Aaah!’ lest her mother-in-law
think they were of the same opinion or on the same side in any shape, manner or form.


The food eaten – a conventional English breakfast; Jessica had been expecting something more foreign – trays of champagne
were carried into the room and Eddie called for a toast to the bride and groom.


‘Ethel and Tom!’ the room cried with real enthusiasm. On such a day, Jessica thought, her mother must wish with all her heart
that she’d been called something pretty and lilting like Rosemary, Cynthia, Madeleine or Talullah. She hated being Ethel;
it smacked of woolly hats, cheap handbags and wrinkled stockings, she claimed. ‘That’s why I called you Jessica,’ she told
her daughter. ‘Shakespeare used it. It rolls so smoothly off the tongue.’


Waiters came in with more champagne and other drinks, along with trays of Turkish delight, glacé fruits, marzipan and assorted
chocolates.


‘This is a strange wedding altogether,’ Lydia mused.

The guests rose from their seats and began to form little groups; the McGraths, the Collinses, the Farleys, the young and
the old, the cousins. The youngest was Peter Farley, Lydia’s brother, who was twenty-three. The new Mrs McGrath had requested
there be no children at her wedding: ‘Running round, shouting, spilling things, and generally making a nuisance of their mischievous
little selves.’


She had said this with a laugh, but in truth she genuinely disliked children. Jessica could remember her mother’s attitude
to herself and her brother, William, when they were young. She had disliked any show of childish behaviour. Jessica and William
– more commonly known as Will – had been discouraged from laughing out loud, running too fast, playing noisily, any one of
which activity could give their mother a headache, though she did enjoy reading them stories. Jessica mainly played with her
dolls, making sure they behaved themselves.


It was her father who’d given them piggybacks, played football in the garden, and taken them to the park. She glowered darkly
at the man who’d taken his place. Will, who had never met his new stepfather, was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and currently
involved in exercises in another part of the world.


Tom caught her eye and grinned. Jessica turned away, embarrassed. He made her feel uncomfortable. She thought about her own
children, missing them. They’d been left with Miss Austin, a retired nurse who lived next door to their house in Sefton Park.
In a moment of sheer terror, she imagined five-year-old Dora falling downstairs while Miss Austin had unintentionally fallen
asleep, or Jamie, two years older, burning, cutting, scalding or hurting himself in some other horribly painful way, possibly
fatal.


‘Do you think the children are all right?’ she said anxiously to Bertie.

‘More all right than they’d be with you, darling,’ he chuckled. He reckoned she was a hopeless mother. Jessica didn’t know why. The children thrived, laughed a lot, were happy.
She loved them with all her heart and they loved her back. What more did Bertie expect?


Music arrived, coming from a source invisible to the human eye, Al Jolsen singing, ‘Oh, how we danced the night we were wed’.
The newly married couple began to waltz, Tom whirling her mother around the room so uninhibitedly that people had to step
back or be knocked over. Her mother was laughing loudly as her daughter had never been allowed to do, her face flushed, her
eyes bright. Tom was smiling, moving faster.


The song ended. Tom picked up his new bride and virtually threw her into the air. ‘It’s time we boarded our ship,’ he shouted,
and there was a swift intake of breath.


Afterwards, Lydia said it was because some people recognized that Tom couldn’t wait to get her mother to bed: ‘It was obvious
from the tone of his voice and the look on his face.’


‘Why did you know that and I didn’t?’ Jessica complained, annoyed with herself.

‘Because you’re so sweet and innocent, Jess,’ Lydia said, a trifle tartly. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt – you know the sort of thing.
You’d never think you were a twenty-seven-year-old married woman with two children. By the way, your mother looks terribly
smart today. Did she buy that outfit in London?’


‘That’s what she wants people to think.’ She wasn’t prepared to lie to Lydia. ‘In actual fact, Miss Fleming made it for her.
It’s a copy of a Chanel model that was on the Paris catwalk only this spring.’


The dress was grey and white georgette with long, full sleeves, a tight belt, and a knee-length, slightly flared skirt. The
hat, now removed, was like an upturned saucepan with a huge white organdie bow at the front. Miss Fleming had been making
her mother’s clothes for years and years. Ethel told people she’d been to London to buy them in Harrods or Selfridges. With
her slim figure and ravishing good looks, she showed off the various fashions to their best advantage. Her going-away outfit was a grey three-quarter-length crêpe coat.


Jessica hadn’t noticed that her mother had left the room, until she returned wearing the coat and hat and hanging on to Tom’s
arm. It was midday, time for them to leave. They were sailing first class to New York on the Queen Mary, staying a week and returning on an aeroplane, which was very daring. Naturally, her mother had wanted to stay longer, but
Tom had a busy schedule. Even in New York, he had business to see to.


They insisted on leaving alone. ‘The room’s booked for the day,’ Tom shouted. ‘Have a fine time, why don’t you? And order
whatever you like.’


They disappeared in a shower of silver confetti and kisses and shouts of ‘Good Luck, have a lovely time’ and ‘Don’t do anything
I wouldn’t do, Tom’ from one of the men.


Jessica didn’t know why she followed, at a distance, down the stairs and into the foyer, and why she watched through the glass
door of the hotel, as Tom helped her mother into the back of a black limousine with a playful slap on her bottom. She still
watched, sighing, as the car glided away in the brilliant sunshine – she had forgotten the sun had been shining so brightly
when they’d come in.


She had never had the same warm relationship with her mother as Lydia had with Aunt Mildred, but she was fond of her. Since
her father had died and William had gone away, Jessica had felt an obligation to look after her fluffy-headed mother, to ensure
she didn’t come to any harm. Right now, she felt apprehensive seeing her go off with a man she hardly knew. And not just a
conventional man, but an outrageous individual, who was bigger and louder and more successful than every other man she knew.
She prayed her mother wouldn’t come to any harm with this person,


A pleasant, silver-haired gentleman in a dark green uniform approached. ‘Are you all right, miss? You look a bit pale.’

‘Yes, I’m just …’ Jessica paused. She couldn’t describe how she felt. Perhaps she’d drunk too much champagne. ‘Could I possibly have a cup of tea or coffee?’ she asked.


‘Of course, miss. Would you like it in the lounge? Tea might be best if you don’t quite feel yourself; more settling on the
stomach than coffee.’


‘Oh, yes. Tea would be lovely. Thank you.’ The man reminded her of her gentle, courteous father. The contrast between Gordon
Farley and Tom McGrath was stark. Her mother’s first husband had been a considerate man, her second was dangerous. She felt
slightly sick at the thought and was glad she’d ordered tea rather than the coffee that might have upset her stomach.


‘This way, miss.’

The man led her into a quiet dark room filled with brown velvet chairs, and held one while she sat. She was the only person
there. ‘I’m sorry, it’s Mrs, isn’t it?’ he said apologetically. He must have noticed her wedding ring. ‘It’s just that you
look too young to be married, if you don’t mind my saying.’


‘I don’t mind.’ She was used to hearing that. Jessica had none of her mother’s charisma. Her eyes were the same blue, her
hair a darker, natural blonde; she was exceptionally pretty, but her expression was timid and slightly bemused, as if she
were unsure of her place in the world, while her confident, outgoing mother dazzled everyone she met.


She relaxed into the chair, her body ticking away the tension of the last few hours. It was lovely and peaceful here, and
when the tea came, she thoroughly enjoyed it.


‘Where have you been?’ Bertie said irritably when Jessica appeared and announced she was going home. ‘You know very well I’m
playing cricket this afternoon.’ It was an Old Boys’ match between his school, St Mary’s, and Merchant Taylor’s.


‘I’ve been downstairs having tea,’ she told him. She’d been easy enough to find had he really wanted to. Anyway, the match didn’t start for another two hours.


‘Look,’ he said, frowning, ‘I think you and Mother should take a taxi home together. She’ll help entertain the children until
I come home.’


Jessica resisted the urge to scream, ‘No!’ at the top of her voice. Since when had she needed help entertaining her own children? ‘Lydia is taking me home in her
car,’ she lied.


Bertie’s frown deepened. ‘I thought I heard Lydia say she was going shopping.’

‘She is; we are.’ Jessica hastened to expand the lie lest he suggest Lydia take his mother home with them. ‘Dora needs a couple
of school blouses from Henderson’s. It would be convenient to get them today.’


‘Why can’t you go another time?’

Why, oh why, was he so often in a bad temper – and only with her?

‘If I leave it too late they’ll run out of stock,’ she said defensively.

‘Oh, all right then. I’ll be home about six.’ He kissed her. ‘Bye, darling.’

‘Goodbye.’ She caught his arm. ‘Don’t forget to tell your mother she can’t come home with me.’

‘Why don’t you …’ he began, but Jessica had gone in a flash before he could finish, ‘… tell her yourself.’

‘I can’t abide her – Ida, that is,’ she said when she and Lydia were on their way to Sefton Park in Lydia’s little Austin
7.


‘Gosh, I didn’t know that!’ Lydia made a false show of surprise. ‘You’ve been married to Bertie for eight years, yet you’ve
never once mentioned that you disliked his mother.’


‘Sorry.’ Jessica mentioned it all the time. It made her feel very uncharitable and mean, but she couldn’t help it. Mrs Collins
was a spiteful woman who was able to wind Bertie, her only child, round her little finger, usually at the expense of Jessica and even, occasionally, the children. She seemed to resent her son being fond of anyone except herself.


‘Out of interest,’ Lydia said, ‘what do I tell Bertie should he mention our supposed visit to Henderson’s? Did we go or not?’

‘We went, but they’d sold out of blouses in Dora’s size. However, they promised to telephone when new stock arrives.’

Lydia nodded. ‘Very good. You are an excellent liar, Jess, extremely convincing.’

‘Oh, don’t say that! The only person I lie to is Bertie.’

‘He’s your husband, the last person you should lie to.’

Jessica groaned. ‘I know, but it’s just that not telling the truth makes life so much easier.’ Easier to say when he did the
accounts that she’d spent some of the housekeeping on groceries rather than cigarettes or a ticket to a matinée at the cinema
– she’d been a few times since Dora had started school in January. He would disapprove of the cigarettes and be horrified
at the idea of her going to the pictures on her own. When they’d first married, he’d been timid and easy-going, but had become
unnecessarily oppressive over the years, she had no idea why.


Her cousin squeezed her knee. ‘Bertie does huff and puff just a bit, but he’s frightfully attractive. Being an estate agent
is a really good job, and he loves you madly. You’re awfully lucky, Jessica.’


‘Some people might think so.’ Perhaps she had felt lucky once, but no longer. As for Lydia, she was desperate to get married.
A fine-looking woman, tall and always fashionably dressed, she had dark brown wavy hair cropped rather mannishly at the back,
brown eyes, and aquiline features that tended to look rather haughty and possibly put men off. She needed to meet a strong
man, one like Tom McGrath, who wouldn’t be deterred by a forceful-looking woman.


Lydia turned into Atlas Road where the Collinses lived in a modern semi-detached house complete with garage and a leafy garden. Their neighbour, Miss Austin, opened the front door and
the children rushed out. They fought with each other to hug their mother the tightest.


‘Have you been good?’ she asked them.

‘As good as gold, Mummy,’ Dora assured her. She was blonde and blue-eyed like her mother, while Jamie was a junior version
of his cricket-playing, tousle-haired father. Like Bertie, he had a healthy tan after spending so much time out of doors.


‘They really have been as good as gold,’ Miss Austin told Jessica. ‘They’re a pleasure to be with. We’ve been playing cards.
I showed them how to play Twenty-One.’


‘It’s called Blackjack in America,’ Jamie informed her.

‘That’s nice.’ Jessica hoped Bertie wouldn’t mind his children being taught to play cards.

Lydia had gone to put the kettle on, Miss Austin went home, and the children still clung to their mother as they went indoors.
She patted their heads, relieved to find them still alive and in one piece.


‘Can we all play Twenty-One?’ Jamie pleaded.

‘In a minute. Are either of you hungry?’

‘Miss Austin made us scrambled eggs and tomatoes for lunch,’ Jamie said. ‘But,’ he added hopefully, ‘she didn’t give us any
pudding.’


Yesterday, Jessica had done loads of baking in readiness for the weekend. She offered them a choice of scones, jam tarts,
or fruitcake. They chose the jam tarts, as she guessed they would.


Lydia had made the tea. Jessica poured milk for the children, and the four sat round the table with a plate of slightly burnt
jam tarts while Jamie instructed them how to play Twenty-One.


They played for an hour – Jamie showed he had the makings of an ace card player – before Lydia announced it was time she left; she was going to the theatre that evening and had to get changed.


Dora, fed up with cards, took her little pram filled with dolls for a walk around the garden, and Jamie lay on his tummy on
the sofa with that week’s copy of Wizard, which he read from cover to cover at least half a dozen times. Jessica went into the kitchen and began to prepare dinner
– lamb chops with mint sauce, mashed potatoes and runner beans, followed by fruitcake, which was not quite as burnt as the
tarts.


Bertie would complain the meal was too basic, not exciting enough. ‘You have no talent for cooking, Jess,’ he had told her
numerous times.


Jessica would just shrug and concede she was a hopeless housewife. She detested cooking and cleaning. Her least favourite
job of all was hanging washing on the line and having it blow back in her face in the cold weather. On the other hand, she
could sew well, knit and embroider beautifully, and made all her own and Dora’s clothes, apart from the uniform that the school
insisted be purchased from Henderson’s. She also enjoyed painting and decorating, an attribute Bertie thought rather odd for
a woman.


Leaving the lamb chops in the oven and the potatoes simmering in a pan, she saw Dora was still preoccupied with her dolls
and Jamie with his comic. Creeping into the parlour, she closed the door, switched on the gramophone and chose a record from
the pile on the shelf underneath.


Minutes later, Al Bowlly’s soft, seductive voice began to croon, ‘Love is the sweetest thing …’ Jessica held out her arms
to an invisible partner and began to sway around the room, forgetting everything, conscious only of the strange yearning in
her breast. ‘The moment I saw you …’ How tenderly he sang. She was no longer in the house in Atlas Road, but somewhere mysterious
and romantic, headily perfumed. She could sense her heart beating faster. ‘The very thought of you …’ She could almost believe someone really was thinking about her now, wanting to put his arms round her. She stood still for a moment, concentrating, and could feel the arms sliding around her back,
stroking her hips.


Jessica groaned just as Dora shouted, ‘Mummy, Daddy’s home’, and she came to with a start, turned off the gramophone and opened
the parlour door. Bertie had gone straight into the garden. He came through the back door into the kitchen with their daughter
in his arms.


‘How did the match go?’ she enquired. She felt much too hot and hoped her cheeks weren’t noticeably flushed.

‘St Mary’s won,’ he announced with a satisfied grin. His own cheeks were flushed, but he’d been playing cricket, not dancing
around the room indulging in impossible dreams.


They ate dinner with Bertie giving a running commentary on the match to an entranced Jamie. He suggested they all went to
Sefton Park tomorrow after Mass, and played cricket themselves: ‘Daddy and Dora against Mummy and Jamie.’


Jamie hooted his approval and Dora looked pleased. Jessica said she’d make a picnic lunch to take with them. What a perfectly
happy family they were!


Later, the children asleep, she and Bertie listened to a John Galsworthy play on the wireless. When it was over, she made
cocoa and immersed herself in the latest book borrowed from the Romance Library in the Post Office while Bertie read The Times until it was half past ten and time for bed.


Another day over, she thought. There was always something sad about going to bed, knowing she’d never experience that particular
day again, feeling as if she’d lost something precious. Behind her, Bertie was checking doors were locked and windows closed.


What was her mother doing now? She imagined a large, brightly lit ballroom on board the ship with an orchestra playing and
her beautiful mother dancing with Tom McGrath. She was probably wearing the silver dress Miss Fleming had made. It troubled her that she should envy her mother’s obvious happiness.


She undressed quickly, put on her nightdress, and got into bed, edging to the far side, pulling the clothes round her shoulders.
Behind her, Bertie was changing into his pyjamas. He went into the bathroom, and Jessica closed her eyes and prayed that when
he came back he would think that she’d fallen asleep. She began to breathe deeply and regularly, and didn’t budge when he
slid into bed beside her.


Then a hand touched her shoulder and he said meekly, ‘Do you mind?’

Jessica turned on to her back, wanting to cry, saying nothing, just letting him get on with it, which he did clumsily and
noisily, taking ages, or so it seemed.


He finished at last and she turned away, pulling the clothes back round her. She hated it, hated it with all her heart. She
would never grow to like it, not if she lived to be a hundred.


‘Can I stay with you, Jess?’ William Farley pleaded. ‘It wasn’t until I came ashore that I remembered Mother had let our old
house and I had no idea where she was living with this new chap. And the new chap might not want me staying with them, anyway.’


‘I’m sure Tom would love having you, Will,’ Jessica assured him, ‘but right now he and mother are in New York on their honeymoon.
They’re flying back on Friday and will live in Tom’s place in Calderstones. But,’ she added, ‘you can stay with us, you know
you can, you idiot. There’s no need to plead. We have a box room on the second floor, only tiny, but big enough to take a
single bed and a chest of drawers.’


‘Will Bertie mind?’

‘Bertie will love having you as much as Tom would.’ Though not as much as she would. Jessica really missed having her brother
around. ‘You can talk to Bertie about the Navy. He’s envious of you leading such an exciting life – his is as dull as dishwater
beside yours. He said that if he didn’t have me and the children to support, he would have joined the Navy long ago.’


Will looked amused. ‘He never mentioned that when we were at school. If I remember rightly, all he ever wanted was an office
job. But perhaps,’ he continued charitably, ‘he didn’t like the idea of leaving his mother.’


Bertie and Will had been at St Mary’s together. Jessica had met her future husband at a leaving party when the boys were eighteen and she was two years younger. An impressionable girl,
she’d considered him impossibly handsome and had fallen crazily in love at first sight.


She looked at Will in his uniform, his long legs stretched out and making the small sitting room seem even smaller. Like their
sorely missed father, he was tall and slim with dark ginger hair and an attractive smile. His features, slightly crooked,
as if they’d been put together in a hurry, had an irresistible appeal. He was the most popular of men with friends in ports
all over the globe. A hopeless letter writer, nobody ever knew where his ship happened to be, and he was apt to turn up out
of the blue when they’d imagined him sailing on foreign seas thousands of miles away. Finding her brother on the doorstep
was like having the sun come out on a miserably dull day.


‘What time do the kids come out of school?’ he asked.

‘Half past three. I go and fetch them. It’s only a short walk away in Princes Park. You can come with me, give them a surprise.’
If only he’d chosen a different career and they could have seen him all the time!


‘Is it a p