On the morning of Mr Tannerson’s meeting, Ellen had walked home from her work on Beverley Road, seen that there was no queue at the grocer’s shop, and decided to call in and have a word with Mr Foster. He was standing at the top of a pair of wooden steps restocking shelves. He looked down as the doorbell clanged and turned to step down.

‘No hurry, Mr Foster,’ Ellen said, ‘though I’ll have a small bag of bicarbonate of soda whilst you’re up there, please.’

She noticed that he had the lightweight produce on the top shelves and the heavier goods at the bottom. At the front of the counter were sacks of potatoes and other root vegetables and boxes of broken biscuits with reduced tickets on them.

He brought down a tin from a lower shelf, scooped out a portion of the powder, weighed it, and poured it into a paper bag. ‘There you are, Mrs Randell. Can I get anything else for you?’

She was pleased that he had remembered her name; it was important to customers, she thought. ‘As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask you something,’ she said.

‘Not a loan, is it?’ She saw he wasn’t serious by the twinkle in his eyes, but he glanced significantly at the notice on the wall behind him, and she followed his gaze. Sorry, No Credit.

She laughed. ‘No. Neither a lender nor a borrower be. My ma and da taught us that.’

‘Mine too. Comes from Shakespeare, so I understand. Not that we had much to lend in any case, but neither did we borrow. So what was it you wanted to ask, m’dear?’

‘You said you had ovens at ’back of your shop that weren’t in use.’

‘Not since my wife died,’ he said, leaning his elbows on the counter. ‘I’m no baker, and nobody’s ever asked me if they could use them.’

‘But if you were asked – if I and a friend asked you – how would you feel about it? Would you mind anybody else using them?’

‘Why, no,’ he said. ‘There’s no sentiment attached to a piece of cast iron that’s taking up a great deal of space. In fact, if I’d had the time and energy I might have dismantled it and sold it for scrap.’

‘There’s just one, then?’ she asked. ‘I thought you’d said two?’

The doorbell clanged again and he looked up as someone came in. ‘G’morning, Mrs Harris. How are you today?’ He turned to Ellen. ‘Take a look if you wish. Be careful you don’t fall over anything back there. I’ve never had the heart to clear up, though I should.’