“Best to look at Maggie’s screen. She’s just started to take an order.” She paused as Maggie typed in the name of a Mrs. Catherine Swift. Dan watched as the screen immediately filled with Mrs. Swift’s address, telephone number, and banking details. “That’s what I like to see,” Katie whispered to him. “A satisfied customer returning for more.” She reached over Maggie’s shoulder and pointed to one of the field boxes near to the bottom of the screen. “That shows that Mrs. Swift has already spent five hundred and eighty pounds with us this year.”

Dan was impressed. “Are there many customers like her?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied quite assuredly. “Once Maggie has finished this order, I’ll ask her to bring up our Top Ten list. I’m pretty certain that you won’t find Mrs. Swift’s name on it.”

Maggie pressed a key, and the address and banking details were replaced by another screen format. She started to type in the order that was being given to her over the telephone.

“This is the stock handling format now,” Katie explained. “Maggie types in what’s required and then checks it against stock. If we have what the customer wants, then she reserves it and that’s knocked off the stock list. If we don’t have it, then it goes into a pending file. After each order is taken, it gets transferred to the monitor in the stockroom and, if all goes well, it should be in the post by the end of the day. If there is some part of the order that is pending, it gets printed out onto a manufacturing list, and along with stock update sheets, goes through to the girls in the workshop who then know what they have to produce.”

“Why do you bother printing out hard copy for them?” Dan asked. “Why don’t you have a monitor in the workshop like you do in the stockroom?”

Katie smiled. “Because the girls in there don’t like computers. We tried it once but it nearly ended in a walkout.” She walked over to the kettle, which Dan had heard click off a minute before. “They much prefer good old-fashioned pieces of paper.” She spooned instant coffee into a mug and poured in the water. “How do you like it?”

“Black’s just fine.”

As Katie handed him the mug, Hilary walked in through the front door of the office, the shoulders of her raincoat damp with rain and her long dark hair plastered against the sides of her face. She placed a silver foil package on the top of the reception desk, took off her coat, and then shook her head from side to side, spraying out water like a shaking dog. “My word, that’s horrible out there,” she exclaimed, tousling her hair with her fingers. She walked over to Dan and handed him the warm package before replacing her raincoat on its peg.