‘Well, as you know, I came to the house when it was new, almost three years ago,’ Isobel began. ‘Ann was ten and Finlay was fourteen. A little while after everyone moved in, things seemed to be alright. Mrs Black was . . . I’m not sure how to describe it. Shall we say there wasn’t much patience inside her. And then one afternoon there was a knock on the scullery door, and there was a woman outside, a bit older than me. She had a message for me. She told me to be careful. And I asked her what she meant and she said she hadn’t been able to get another place after she had worked for Mrs Black.’

Ursula frowned. ‘Did she tell you why that was?’

‘She said that word had been put about that she was unreliable. That she wasn’t clean in her habits and she was loose with her morals.’

‘And these rumours had come from . . .’

‘From Mrs Black. The woman could not prove it, of course, but she said that she’d been offered plenty of positions but as soon as her references were taken up, the offers were withdrawn.’

‘And had she done anything to deserve these statements?’

‘I didn’t ask. But I assumed the fact that she was warning me meant that there was no truth in them at all. She said that the problem had started when she decided not to move to Library Terrace. She was a small woman and she had a rasp to her breathing. She said the house would have been too much for her. She had looked all over the place. Situations in The Scotsman, and some agencies as well. In the end she stopped trying and went back to her family. They have a smallholding near Haddington. She was up in Edinburgh that day to go to the Infirmary for her lungs and she took it upon herself to come and speak to me, and she left me her address, in case I should need it.’

‘And then what happened?’

Isobel rubbed her forehead, leaving a floury mark. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Nothing until a few weeks later. Then one day Mrs Black accused me of eating more food than I was entitled to. She said she had been monitoring it and that I was having more than my share and that the food was hers to give out and not mine to take. And she accused me of improper relations with the postman. She said that it was disgusting how I was carrying on with him.’

‘The same postman we have now? But he must be about fifty years old and you are barely twenty!’

‘I’m twenty-two, it was on the census form.’

Ursula skimmed past the reminder. ‘This is scarcely believable.’