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  A year later, Joe proposed to Molly on bended knee, and even bought an engagement ring from H. Samuel, which he’d spent two weeks’ salary on. But she turned him down. Not because she didn’t want to marry Joe, but she wouldn’t consider marriage until they could afford a place of their own.

  “But if we get married,” said Joe, “we can put our name down for a council house, and not have to go on living with my parents.” Molly didn’t want to live in a council house.

  And then the worst thing that could happen, happened. Joe got the sack.

  “It ain’t that you’re no good at the job, lad,” said the supervisor, “but bosses at council want cutbacks, so it’s last in, first out, and as you’ve only been with us for a couple of years, I’ll have to let you go. Sorry about that.”

  Just when Joe thought it couldn’t get any worse, Molly announced she was pregnant.

  They were married a month later, his dad having told him in no uncertain terms, “There’s never been a bastard in our family, and we won’t be startin’ now.”

  Once the banns had been read, the wedding was held three weeks later at St. Mary the Immaculate parish church, with a reception afterward at the King’s Arms across the road. No expense spared. The girls drank Babycham, while the lads downed pints of Barnsford bitter and cleared the pub out of crisps and pork pies. Everyone had a good time. But when the newly married couple woke up in Mr. Simpson’s spare room the following morning, Joe was still on the dole, and Molly was still pregnant, and they didn’t have enough money for a honeymoon, even a weekend in Blackpool.

  That was when their uncle Bert, without intending to, changed their whole lives.

  Uncle Bert worked at Barnsford Zoo, where he cleaned out Big Boris’s cage, the lion folks came to see from all over the county. It was at his wedding bash over a pint of bitter that Bert told Joe a job might be coming up at the zoo, and if he popped in on Monday, he’d introduce him to the manager, Mr. Turner.

  On Monday morning, Joe put on a clean shirt and a pair of neatly pressed trousers, and borrowed one of his father’s two ties. He was on the top deck of a double-decker bus on his way to the zoo, when he first spotted the piece of land in the distance. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. When he got off the bus, he didn’t head straight for the nearest turnstile, but walked in the opposite direction.

  Joe stood and stared at a large plot of waste land that must have had a hundred vehicles parked on it. He spent the day watching as cars, vans, even coaches came and went, filling any space that was available with no rhyme or reason, some of the drivers not even visiting the zoo. An idea was beginning to form in his mind, and by the end of the day, Joe’s only thought was, could he get away with it?

  “So did Mr. Turner offer you the job?” asked Molly when Joe arrived back just in time for tea.

  “I never saw Mr. Turner,” Joe admitted. “Something came up.”

  “What came up?” demanded Molly.

  Joe buttoned his lip when his dad strolled in, and it wasn’t until they climbed into bed later that night that he told Molly how he’d spent his day, and then shared his big idea with her.

  “You’re daft as a pumpkin, Joe Simpson. That’s council land, and you’d be done for trespassing, and what’s more I’ll prove it, then you won’t have to waste any more time and can go and get that job at the zoo before someone else grabs it.”

  Molly spent the following morning at Barnsford Town Hall, where she visited the estates department, and got chatting to a young man who, after checking several ordnance survey maps, couldn’t be sure who did own the land, the council or the zoo. Molly still wasn’t convinced. But at least she now considered it a risk worth taking.

  Joe took the bus to the zoo every day for the next week, where he made notes of how many people parked on the land, and roughly how long they spent visiting the zoo. He waited until they closed for the night and the last car had departed, before he paced out the boundaries. He wrote in his little book: 226 paces by 172.

  The following day, he returned to his old stomping ground on Lakeside Drive, explaining that he needed a word with his old man. But once he got there, he measured a council parking space, this time not in paces, but in feet with an old school ruler: 18 ft. by 9 ft. for cars and vans, 40 ft. by 11 ft. for coaches. His dad couldn’t make head nor tail of what the lad was up to.

  Joe spent the weekend trying to calculate how many cars could be parked on the zoo site. After he double-checked his figures, he decided there was enough room for 114 cars and 5 coaches. When Molly returned from work that night, he showed her his planned layout for the car park. She was impressed, but remained skeptical.

  “You’ll never get away with it!” she said.

  “Maybe not, but as no one else is offering me a job, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  Molly raised an eyebrow. “So what are you going to do next?”

  “I’m going to learn how to paint a parking space in the dark.”

  “Then you’ll need a torch, and a pot of white emulsion,” said Molly, “not to mention a brush, a bucket of water, and a broom to clear the space, as well as some string and nails to mark out a straight line even before you can start thinking about painting anything. And by the way, Joe, while you’re at it, I’d recommend you start by trying to paint four straight lines in the light.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in my plan?” said Joe.

  “I don’t, but if you’re going to give it a go, at least do the job properly.”

  Joe visited every paint merchant in the town, while Molly went off to work at Mason’s. After a day of comparing prices, Joe came to the conclusion he could only afford to buy six tins of white paint if he was still going to have enough money left over to get all the other bits and pieces Molly had insisted on.

  “I can get the string, nails, a hammer, and a large broom from Mason’s,” said Molly when she arrived home after work that evening. “So you can cross them off your list.”

  “But what about the bucket?”

  “Well, borrow Mr. Mason’s fire bucket, and then you can fill it up in the public toilet outside the zoo.” Joe nodded. “Next thing you’ll have to do is a dry run,” said Molly.

  “A dry run?”

  “Yes, you’ll need to find a derelict council site and practice painting one space, until you’ve got the hang of it.”

  When Molly went to work the next day, Joe headed off to an old bomb site on the outskirts of town, and painted his first car parking space. Not as easy as he had thought it would be. However, by the end of the week, he could complete one in forty minutes that wasn’t half bad. The only problem was that he ran out of paint, and although he had nearly perfected his technique, Molly had to sacrifice a week’s wages so he could replenish his stocks. By early December, he was ready to move onto the site.

  “Our next problem,” said Molly, “is finding a time when you can paint the parking spots while no one else is around to see what you’re up to.”

  “I’ve already worked that one out,” said Joe. “This year Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so no one will be visiting the site on the Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and even bank holiday Monday, when the zoo will still be closed. So I could probably paint a hundred spaces in that time.”

  “I think a dozen would be quite enough to start with,” said Molly. “Let’s make sure your big idea works before we spend any more money than necessary. Don’t forget that Mr. Mason started his business with six cars, and now he’s got a showroom with over a hundred in the forecourt, as well as a Jaguar dealership.”

  Joe reluctantly agreed, and began to prepare himself for the big day.

  * * *

  Joe couldn’t get to sleep on Christmas Eve, and was up the following morning even before Molly had woken. He put on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and his old school gym shoes. He crept downstairs and collected an ancient pram from the shed at the bottom of the garden, which Molly had filled the night before with everyth