‘Oh, you!’ Tess said, poking him in the ribs. ‘When have you ever known me too tired to dance? Don’t you wish you could be in the shop when the animals and birds and things start to arrive though? Gran is worried that I’ve overstretched myself and too many will be coming in over the course of the next few days, but Miss Foulks’s stockroom is enormous and we can keep what you might call reserve animals in there until there’s space in the shop itself.’

‘Then you’ll come dancing? Jolly good,’ Snowy said. ‘Dancing helps one to relax, they say, and I do like my girlfriends to be relaxed. And as for missing out on your opening day, what nonsense! I shall be there with friends from university, all of whom are anxious to own a goldfish, or possibly a couple of day-old chicks. I’ve promised them special rates so one or two of them might even stretch to a rabbit . . .’

Tess was beginning to say, repressively, that she did not think his fellow students were the right sort of people to own pets when she heard the tap-tap of high-heeled shoes on the paving stones and a breathless voice crying: ‘Wait for me, you two.’

Tess and Snowy stopped in their tracks as an elegantly dressed blonde came to a halt beside them, her eyes fixed on Snowy. ‘Snowy White, I thought it were you!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Even from the back I knew you! Do you reckernise me? It’s been years.’

Snowy had been staring hard, but suddenly he let go of Tess and shot his hand forward to take the other girl’s. ‘Well, I’m damned, if it isn’t Marilyn Thomas,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in this neck of the woods? The last time I was in your mam’s shop she told me you’d got work in the gowns department of a big London store . . . Harrods, was it?’ He grinned brilliantly at Marilyn. ‘Have they given you the big E already?’

Marilyn sniffed and tossed her head. ‘I’ve gorra weekend off,’ she said. ‘Did my mam tell you I were a mannequin? I work in gowns, like she said, but I show clothes from eleven to twelve in the mornings and three to four in the afternoons. I get paid extra, ’cos they think a deal of me in gowns.’

Tess shifted from foot to foot. Not once in this whole conversation had Marilyn so much as looked at her; how rude the older girl was, Tess thought, but even as she was considering strolling over to the nearest window and pretending to look inside, Snowy took her hand again. ‘Sorry, Tess, how rude of me,’ he said. ‘But of course you know Marilyn as well as I do, so there’s no need for introductions.’

Marilyn sniggered. ‘Oh, so it’s you,’ she said offhandedly, glancing at Tess. She turned back to Snowy. ‘Where are you off to? Any chance of takin’ me dancin’ tomorrow? Or I wouldn’t mind goin’ to the flicks; there’s a good one on at the Plaza.’