“I’m sorry about that, Hilary,” Katie said. “I should have stopped by on the way here. I’m afraid my mind is a bit full of other things at the minute.”

“Not to worry,” the girl said brightly.

Dan smiled his appreciation at the young receptionist before she resumed her seat.

“What would you like to do?” Katie asked. “We could either sit down and have a chat now, or we could continue with the tour?”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Dan replied, “I think it might be best to leave questions to the end.” Holding his coffee mug between arm and chest, he took the silver wrapper off the bacon sandwich and threw it in a wastepaper bin. “As long as you don’t mind me having breakfast as we go.”

“Not at all. Come on then, we’ll start in the workshop.”

Katie led Dan through the windowed door at the back of the office and immediately he was hit by the whirring discord of the sewing machines and the blare of pop music from the speakers that were suspended from the metal rafters above the shop floor. Dan counted twelve machinists, all bent in concentration over their work, running the brightly coloured fabric through their machines, working foot pedal and hands in complete synchronization. Beside each workstation was positioned a stack of plastic boxes on the sides of which were written a series of numbers, preceded by two letters. Dan noticed that no two boxes were the same.

Katie saw him studying them. “Those are the manufacturing codes,” she shouted into his ear. “Different fabrics, different size garments, and different panels. Everything gets started at the back beside the cutting table and then moves forward, so that the finished article comes off over there by the door. Elsie here”— Elsie glanced up when she heard her name being mentioned, took one look at Dan, and went puce with embarrassment—“is doing pockets, and once she’s finished this batch, she’ll push her boxes on to Karen in front there who’ll put in the elastic.”

Katie led the way through the row of machinists to the back of the shop floor. As they walked, a shrill wolf whistle pierced the air and Dan turned to see the girl next to Elsie lean over and give her a teasing punch on the arm. Elsie’s embarrassment was so intensified that her head almost disappeared into her lap.

Katie laughed. “Don’t worry. They give that treatment to any man who walks in here. You actually got off quite lightly.” She rested her hands on the edge of the large cutting table, and both she and Dan watched as a well-built girl wearing a baseball cap back to front deftly steered an electric cutting knife around a pattern that was laid upon a layer of fabric almost a foot deep.