“This is a pretty skilled job,” Katie boomed out. “One slip of the knife and that whole lay of material may well have to be junked.”

“Has that happened before?” Dan asked.

Katie smiled at him and moved close to the baseball cap. “Morag, he’s asking if we’ve ever had to scrap a lay before?”

The girl’s head jerked up to look at him, and Dan was quite taken aback by the obvious affront that flashed in her eyes. She shook her head once before resuming her work.

Dan could tell that Katie was suppressing a laugh. “There’s your answer.” She turned and made her way back towards the door. “It is without doubt these girls that have made this company, not me. They think nothing of working over the weekend or well into the night if we fall behind on manufacturing. I seem to remember that when you called on Sunday night, it was pretty late, wasn’t it?”

Dan nodded.

“Well, there you are then. In a way, you’ve already been witness to it. They all take pride in what they do, and what makes it even better is that they’re all my friends. We’re just one big happy family.”

Dan couldn’t help but notice that there was almost a heaviness of heart in the way that Katie adulated her workers. As they returned to the office area, it came to him that of course she would feel that way. She was selling the business, after all, and the uncertainties regarding the future employment of her “family” had to be weighing heavily on her mind.

By the time that Dan had finished off his bacon sandwich and drunk his cup of coffee, they had completed the tour, having passed quickly through the high-shelved stockroom, with its neatly folded rows of trousers and jerseys, and the dispatch room, stacked with packets of tissue paper and smart blue boxes with Vagabonds written in gold italics across their lids. Returning to the reception area, Dan collected his holdall and followed Katie to the rear of the office. She pulled a chair away from the wall for him before sitting down at her desk.

“Right, then,” she said. “Let’s get to the questions. What would you like to ask me?”

Unzipping his holdall, Dan dug around to retrieve Nina’s battered exercise book. “May I?” he asked, reaching across and taking a biro from the wicker pen tray on Katie’s desk. He sat down on the chair and crossed his legs. “Well, let’s start with the most important question. Can I ask you what your turnover is?”

Katie raised her eyebrows, seemingly startled by the forthrightness of the question. “Right.” She hesitated briefly. “Well, I think that last year we were at about the half-million mark, but I reckon that the company will surpass it this year.”