Moments later, they left the room. Maggie was glad they hadn’t invited her along. She wasn’t quite sure what she thought about Pam and Nancy and it had been quite exhausting, trying not to say the wrong thing. She put her head around the door and watched as they waltzed down the corridor with linked arms, chattering nineteen to the dozen.

Oh! What was that? She turned her head, just in time to see a small figure with dark hair race across the landing at the other end of the corridor. He was gone in a flash. Maggie stared at the place where he’d been. A child, a little boy, she was sure of it. Or was she seeing things? Had he been real?

She swallowed. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Not really. But then, she’d never been anywhere like Snowden Hall before. It must be centuries old. If anywhere was haunted, it was here. She glanced back the other way but Pam and Nancy had disappeared too. She was quite alone.

Oh, she was being fanciful. She’d seen someone’s child, that was all. He probably belonged to someone who worked here, or the Ashfords themselves. She knew so little about the couple that were hosting them. As much as she was dreading it, at least she might find out more at this drinks party tonight.

She turned back into the room, glad to have some time to herself and to unpack the few things she’d brought.

She hoped Nancy wasn’t going to make it her mission to find her a chap. None of the men from the bank that she’d met so far had set her heart a-flutter and besides, romance was the last thing on Maggie’s mind.

All she wanted to do was to concentrate on her work, make sure Vi was happy and well cared for and find out, somehow, where they’d taken Mutti.

Nothing else mattered.

Chapter 7

Just before seven o’clock that evening, Maggie and the others gathered on the first-floor landing, in readiness for the welcome reception.

They’d all scrubbed up rather well. The chaps – Ray Maguire and Big Bill and two others whose names Maggie had forgotten – looked dapper in crisp shirts, flannels and Fair Isle pullovers. Even middle-aged Miss Sharp looked surprisingly glamorous, sporting a bright slick of scarlet lipstick and without her spectacles.

Laughter and chatter filled the air and drifted up from the hallway, where bank workers and their wives, who’d driven up from London earlier that day, were arriving for the party.

Pam and Nancy were hanging over the balustrade, calling out and waving to colleagues below. They were dolled up in pretty dresses, high heels and plenty of what Maggie’s dad would’ve called ‘war paint’.