And so it began. Bill Foster was delighted with the response; he’d enjoyed a slice of soda bread and butter with a wedge of cheese too, just like Mrs Sharp. Ellen came back in the evening to mix white bread and brown and set them to prove, and next morning after baking she cut a few slices from each and Bill Foster put them out on the counter covered by muslin and invited his customers to try them. The comeback was encouraging, and every day that week she tried out different types of flour until customers were flocking to the door.

Anna came to look and brought some Polish recipes for Ellen to try using rye flour and caraway seed, and another sweetened with honey. ‘For English taste,’ she suggested, ‘perhaps mix with wheat.’

Lizzie came to see the range and made suggestions for a working arrangement with Bill Foster, who was so easy-going he would have agreed to anything that brought customers to his shop. But most of all, Ellen was pleased that Harry was delighted with her success.

‘I could mebbe retire and never work again,’ he joked. ‘My industrious wife can keep me in ’lap of luxury.’

She knew he was joking, of course, and within a month he was invited to join the company Tannerson had approached, who were going to acquaint him with the more complex aspects of seed-crushing and milling. He was ready, he told her. He felt much fitter now, and although he would always have scars they were mostly on his chest and under his arms, as he’d been thrown backwards off the ladder and the river water had doused his burning clothes within seconds.

He was an apt student and asked many questions about the technical side of the hydraulic conveying operation; about the grain and the risks and hazards of working with highly combustible products in an enclosed space, a subject he had been aware of only in the context of working in open fields during hay making or when harvesting corn.

‘Venting seems to be the most important part of indoor procedure,’ he said to Tannerson in his weekly meeting with him. ‘As we know to our cost, closing them can be dangerous, especially where there’s a lot of dust; and I’ve learned too that an old mill of brick and stone like Tannerson’s contains any explosion within the building and so creates a fire, but if the cap and upper walls are of thinner material they will blow if there’s a heat build-up, thus saving the rest of the building and possibly lives as well.’

‘Write a report, will you, Harry?’ Tannerson suggested. ‘Any information is valuable.’