‘Never mind. I’ll ask Miss Smith, if I remember.’ Ann felt her cheeks start to flush. It had happened a few times over the last month, and she assumed it was just one of the things that meant you were almost finished with being twelve. ‘Maybe it would be better to talk to Miss Smith about my birthday instead of silly sticks. Do you know that from today, it’s exactly four months until I will be thirteen?’ She walked to the door, leaving the crushed tea towel on the table and a snowfall of flour on the floor. ‘And have you heard that The Great Lafayette is coming to Edinburgh? That is very exciting indeed.’

Chapter 6

January 1911

Ursula had insisted on walking Ann to school on the first day of the new term. She wasn’t sure she would do it every day, but it had seemed important to make an effort at least once. On her way back she glanced surreptitiously through the iron railings of the other houses in Library Terrace and tried to get a sense of who her new neighbours were from their taste in curtains and furniture. As she reached number 25, she paused, still not quite believing that this was now her home.

The stained glass in the inner door to the hall gleamed and sprinkled blue and green across the floor as she entered. Her umbrella, neatly furled and ready to use, was propped up against the coat stand. The recent spell of dry weather had stopped her taking it with her on every trip, but as she hung up her coat and removed her hat, she reflected that she was bound to be caught out eventually.

The hall smelled of beeswax polish with a hint of roses. It wasn’t an unpleasant scent, but it was the choice of another woman, and one of the many things that she planned to change, a little at a time. The pace would need to be slow and imperceptible, unlike the breakneck speed of events since their wedding just before Christmas. It was scarcely believable to her that she had been married to John for only a matter of weeks, and in the space of a few words in front of a minister, she had become the wife of her former employer and taken on two almost grown children. Life with a live-in maid was already proving to be rather different from living on her own in a compact tenement flat, with just a little help from the laundry service.

She looked at the hall clock; at this hour John would be delegating the organisation of the second print runs to his supervisors, and doubtless he would be being awkward with the new secretary Ursula had selected to replace her. In time, Wilma Jackson would manage him well enough, she thought.