She bent down to pick up the post and smiled as she saw the familiar cursive script in black ink. A letter from Isobel. It had been a while.

Ann was good at deferred rewards. She took the letter to the kitchen and put it on the table next to her knitting. The kitchen, and indeed the whole house, was cold. She had gone out early before relighting the range, but the fire was set, a criss-cross of twigs and newspaper, ready for her return. She tried not to light the big black-leaded monster in the morning unless she was sure she would be in for the day. Occasionally, if she had an afternoon errand, she would let the coals die down to just embers, and put the heavy fireguard over the firebox, and then stoke it back up on her return. It was risky to leave it burning when she went out, even with the guard firmly fastened to the hooks she had screwed into the wall, but since the range also heated the water in the tank above, it was a fine balancing act between safety and practicality.

She lit the single gas ring in the scullery, purchased after speaking to the decorator two weeks earlier, and put the kettle on to boil.

The house was silent apart from the ticking of the kitchen clock, and her own voice. She barely went into the rooms upstairs any more. They were clean enough, but living alone had meant making changes. The bedroom doors were left closed and the parlour unused, and she lived downstairs where there was everything she needed. The drawing room could substitute for a parlour if she ever had need of such a thing, and the old dining room with its glazed double doors opening onto the garden was now her bedroom. She had positioned a bird table outside and she could see the house sparrows and starlings clustering around it when she opened the curtains in the morning. Often, she got back into bed and watched them, just for the joy of it.

The big table in the kitchen was her office and her knitting station and her bakery. It suited her well enough to live this way. She could manage, financially. Her inheritance, and the recent sale of her father’s business, had seen to that. She wasn’t wealthy, but she was careful. Even with the depression, the interest on the capital sum meant that the bills were paid comfortably with funds left over to be invested, and she could always moderate the coal and the gas if required.