It wasn’t anyone he recognised. She was slender and in her mid-forties, he guessed. She was dressed in an overcoat and headscarf. Visitors or guests wouldn’t come through the back door; he wondered who she was.

She was nearly upon him now. He knew he must look rather sorry for himself and he tried to perk up. The last thing he wanted to hear was, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen!’

But the woman merely thanked him with a tight smile as he shifted along the step, to let her past.

‘Well, here goes nothing,’ she said quietly, as though bracing herself and then she walked through into the kitchen.

There was a moment’s silence, then exclamations of surprise and delight.

‘Oh, ’ere she is!’

‘Well, as I live and breathe!’

Whoever she was, she was getting a better welcome than him. You’d think Queen Elizabeth herself had arrived.

‘Now then, Gwen,’ someone said from inside the house. It sounded like the housekeeper’s gravelly voice. ‘I’ve got just the errand for you.’

A little cat padded across the cobbled yard towards Ray, meowing softly, asking to be stroked. He wondered what had happened to the cat Maggie had brought on the train. Perhaps this was it, it looked similar. At least the cat seemed to like him, even if no one else did. He rubbed the soft fur on its head.

Was he really ‘pompous’, like Elsie had said? He wasn’t one of the gang anymore, that was for sure. He was above them all now. Above his station, they probably thought.

His gut twisted. Giving orders and being in charge wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Uncle Bob had urged him to aim high but what if he wasn’t cut out for management, for something better?

He definitely couldn’t face joining up.

‘It’s your nerves, love,’ Ma said, whenever the subject arose. ‘And you’re chesty. You take after your father, God rest his soul. You like your home comforts, Raymond. You wouldn’t be any good out there in the desert, trying to be a soldier.’

He exhaled and the little cat twirled itself through his hands, tail held high. There was no point in getting fed up, he would simply have to rise above it.

But the thought wouldn’t go away. If he wasn’t cut out for management or joining up, what in heaven’s name was he cut out for?

Chapter 22

There was a rap on the door of Joseph’s office.

Perhaps it was Miss Corbett, with the answer to his request? When he’d asked her to teach him German yesterday, she’d looked bemused. And most unwilling. So, he’d allowed her to buy herself some time. The situation had been something of a novelty. When he made a request, people tended not to say no.