She saw indecision on his face, as if he were weighing up whether to give his name or simply make a run for it; she rather hoped it would be the latter, for she could describe him perfectly.

‘Who are you, anyway?’ he asked boldly. ‘I might ask why you’re in Mr Tannerson’s office when he’s not!’

She crossed her arms and stared at him. ‘I have ’advantage of knowing where he is and when he’ll be back; whereas you, whoever you are, only saw him drive away as you were skulking by the gates and don’t know where he’s gone or for how long.’ She chanced a glance out of the window and allowed an uplift of her lips.

She turned back to him. ‘For your information, if indeed you did formerly work for Mr Tannerson, you’ll be pleased to know that our paths will cross again. I run this office now; you’ll answer to me in ’matter of timekeeping, and I pay out ’wages. Another matter of possible interest to you: we’ll be starting with a clean slate, so to speak, once ’mill is up and running again, and I will be handling ’interviews of potential workers.’

This last was a lie, for it hadn’t been discussed, but she could spot a shirker a mile off and knew there was one right here. She glanced down at the paper in her hand. ‘What did you say your name was?’

He didn’t stop to tell her but swore at her in fulsome and fruitful language on his way out of the door, which didn’t upset her at all, though she found the sheet of paper in her hand was shaking when she sat down.

She was calmer by the time Tannerson returned. She had found a half bottle of whisky in one of the cupboards and filled a chipped cup with water from the tap in the yard, hoping it was drinkable and trusting that the whisky would kill off any infections if it wasn’t. Then she had returned to the office and poured herself a generous splash, which she drank with the bread and cheese that she’d brought to work with her.

Tannerson wrinkled his nose when he entered the office, and as she hadn’t removed the cup from the desk there was no point in prevaricating, so she told him what had happened, describing the man who had entered the office exactly: his thick grey hair and slightly bent long nose, and more remarkably his eyes, one brown, one blue.

‘Ellison! To a T,’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s my foreman. I’ve trusted him!’

Lizzie looked askance at him. ‘Well, you might want to think again about doing so in future, unless there was something in your desk drawer that belonged to him?’